Well events in our Tuesday night CoC campaign are progressing at a nice clip. My pulp-writing author Zach Hatton made every single rifle roll he tried and damn near failed every other roll, which did make him seems a tad less of a "thinker" type than I'd been going for.

Having said that, it's always nice to be the guy blowing people away left right and centre, and we did manage to break into a place of dodgyness and rescue three people from a rather grisly fate (we weren't just blowing people away for the hell of it), as well as retrieving an overdue (well stolen, actually) library book.

Bizarrely, General Tangent reports that at this stage in the campaign, we've achieved more than the Bradford Players did when they played the campaign (he bought the audio recordings as part of the Yog Sothoth 10th Anniversary DVD). Apparently, they bypassed said dodgy location completely.

Needless to say, if they were played this campaign worse than us...

:)

QUOTE OF THE DAY (THAT I CAN REMEMBER)

"Are you still married, or did we come to the conclusion that it was a really bad idea?"

EXCHANGE OF THE DAY

John: I'll give the sledgehammer to the sergeant, and get him to break down the door.

General Tangent: He's not very strong. You're stronger than him.

John: But you said he's a big guy?

General Tangent: He is. He's size 18. But he's only got a strength of 11.

John: How can he have a size of 18 and a strength of 11?

Me: Doughnuts? He is a cop...

OBLIGATORY REFERENCE TO JOHN'S PC FAILING COURAGE ROLL IN FIRST (WWI) SCENARIO #1

John: [Speaking to police colleague about us] These guys are okay. I served with them in the war.

Me: To be fair, he said "with" and not "alongside".

OBLIGATORY REFERENCE TO JOHN'S PC FAILING COURAGE ROLL IN FIRST (WWI) SCENARIO #2

John: [Discussing an assault on a building] You stay here and give covering fire. I'll run across the yard and dive through the doorway.

Me: [Looking at General Tangent, the GM] Does he need to make some kind of courage roll for that.

John: Excuse me? When your mate got killed a few sessions ago, who was it who chased after his killers, and who was it who stayed behind?

Me: [Thinks] Well, erm... Hang on a minute, didn't I get hurt? [Looks at character sheet] I'm wounded!

John: That's why you should stay by the window.

Tags: call of cthulhu, masks of nyarlathotep

Not a huge amount happened, although we did of course have the obligatory reference to John's FBI PC's courage test failure several sessions (and several years of game time) ago.

John: I'll go in first, you guys follow me.

TAFKAC: [To me] Well that's going to be a surprise for us!

And there was some slight confusion when we were discussing which weaponry to take before making the above entrance:

Me: I've just got a revolver. Are you suggesting that we walk down the centre of the street, three abreast, shotguns in hand, moody theme music playing in the background?

John: [Protesting] This is New York not Dodge City!

Me: Exactly! Which is why I'm only carrying a revolver.

Tags: call of cthulhu, masks of nyarlathotep

During a discussion about heroism:

TAFKAC: What would you like written on your tombstone?

Me: Something like 1977.

Sadly, given that this is a Call of Cthulhu game set in 1925, my money would be very much on "1925".

And then from a discussion about whether or not John's PC would like to be accompanied on an outside "smoking excursion" (i.e. an excuse to leave a party and sneak around) by myself or Emily (TAFKAC's PC's appearance *15* secretary¹):

John: But my character's married!

All/Varied/Everyone: You gave your character a wife? In Cthulhu? That's just evil!

And for those who were following this last week, the answer to, "How big is Emily's muff?" turned out to be "big enough". And thanks to evilref for the line about, "Big enough to get her hand in?"

I stole that line and used it last night.

Finally, poor John is still suffering from a single bad roll his character made way back in one of the first play sessions, when - needing to make a courage test to get out of a shell hole and charge a German trench - he muffed the roll, leaving myself and TAFKAC's PCs to make the charge without him, and then each come damn close to being killed by the several Germans we found in the trench.

We never fail to remind him of this, with lines such as:

"Is that why you joined the FBI? You know, because you had something to prove?"

Last night's was:

"It would be interesting to meet your wife. She'd ask if we were together during the war, and we could say that no, strictly speaking us two were together and you were a few dozen yards behind us."

¹TAFKAC originally rerolled an 18 for her size, which would have put her squarely in "KGB secretary" territory. But General Tangent allowed him to reroll, and he got an 11 - which is still bigger than my semi-midget PC.

Tags: call of cthulhu, masks of nyarlathotep

We found ourselves deep in double-entendre territory when we got to discussing whether or not we were attending a party tooled up, and in particular, whether TAFKAC's playboy PC's secretary was carrying:

General Tangent (GM): Emily keeps her gun in her muff.

We held it together at that point, but lost it totally a little while later when - during a discussion on how to smuggle some items out of the party, someone (I think it was John) came out with the line:

"How big is Emily's muff?"

Tags: call of cthulhu, masks of nyarlathotep

Last night, we started the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign proper. An old writer friend of my pulp author Zach sent me a cryptic telegram, so crack researcher that I am (Library Use 75%) I headed off down to the New York Times's archives. Two rolls of 79% later (yes, not only did I fail twice in a row, but I failed with the exact same number) I'd come to the conclusion that God really wants us to play Trail of Cthulhu, and not Call of Cthulhu. But luckily, John's federal agent managed to find the bunch of newspaper reports we were looking for.

Adventure awaits!

Best line of the night (I suspect tongue-in-cheek) involved TAFKACs big game hunter, who turned out to be very, very rich, during a discussion about newspapers and waiting.

TAFKAC: I'll buy the Post.

General Tangent (GM): You'll have to make a Credit Rating check for that.

TAFKAC: What? I've got a Credit Rating of 75!

General Tangent (GM): Oh, you just want to buy a copy of the Post! Sorry, I thought you wanted to buy the company.

Tags: call of cthulhu, masks of nyarlathotep

Well after two sessions of our new Call of Cthulhu campaign, my character Zack Hatton has lost a grand total of 25% of his sanity - and that after starting on an impressively high sanity score of 80. I guess starting your campaign in the Great War (a.k.a. WWI) can do that to you.

The plan was/is for this to be a prequel, after which our characters will go their separate ways before meeting up in 1925 to start the campaign proper. We've already created our characters as they will be then. Zach was to have become a writer, vicariously fulfilling his dreams through a pulp character, Jonny Tennessee. But after what he's seen in the last two sessions, I'm thinking I might have to tweak it a bit.

It won't be straight pulp he's writing, but dark tangled horror, and it won't be dreams he's fulfilling; it will be nightmares he's trying to purge.

Quote of the session:

There's never a good time to learn how the botch rules of a system work, but having just rolled a 97 while attempting to throw a grenade is most definitely not one of them.

Tags: call of cthulhu

We're now creating characters for the Masks campaign. I cowardly left the decision as to what system we should use to the guys; when I got to General Tangent's last night I found that they'd voted to play safe, and stick with the standard Basic Roleplaying System version. (i.e. Good old Call of Cthulhu).

Which then led us to the issue of characters. The game is set in 1925, but will include a WWI prequel set in 1918. John had already created an FBI agent. TAFKAC had rolled up a set of stats but was still considering what character to play.

General Tangent suggested that when you have a three-party CoC group, it can sometimes help to think of it as needing one person to investigate, one person to shoot things, and one person to read books (both dodgy and non-dodgy).

I asked which of those three roles Rafe had fulfilled in the Horror on the Orient Express campaign. They informed me that he hadn't, and suggested that it perhaps explained a lot.

My first character idea seemed superficially similar to Rafe, but was actually different, because while he was played for Jeeves & Wooster type laughs, this would be serious. I was thinking of a charismatic young Virginian from an "old Southern aristocracy" background who, after a spell in France in WWI had been a famous college footballer before being elected to the United States Congress.

I rolled my stats. They were crap. With General Tangent's permission, I rolled again. They were still crap. I rolled a third time, and they were okay.

Except that they weren't okay enough. The problem with the sort of Kennedy-esque superman I'd come up with was that, well he was a Kennedy-esque superman. To be a great footballer I'd need strength, agility and stamina. To be a congressman heading for high office I need to be both intelligent and charismatic, with a strong reserve of resolve and willpower.

I'd need everything to be good - but I'd rolled a 5. Where the hell was I going to put that 5? It was pointed out that I could take three points off something else and put it on that. Cue the following conversation.

"Look, you've got a 10 and a 15 to assign to size and intelligence. You can assign the 15 to intelligence, take 3 off the 10 to add to the 5, and assign the 7 you end up with to size."

"Well how big will I be with a size of 7?"

[General Tangents consults the rulebook].

"57 to 59 inches."

"That's four foot eleven! I can't be a four foot eleven American football player!"

"Well you might be able to go past people without them even noticing."

Thus died my Virginian football playing congress-midget. But I did then come up with a second idea. I'll post him here once I've written him up.

Tags: call of cthulhu

Just sent the following reply to John, in answer to his question about last Monday's session, in which we finally finished the epic Horror on the Orient Express campaign:

Having spent some time thinking about it, I think the ending is completely appropriate and should be left as it is. While Victor's death at the hands of a megalomaniac who sucked out his soul and appropriated his body was personally unfortunate, it was in keeping with the general risks that heroes face when they enter a quest such as this.

And I think the same principle applies to Rafe and Drake.

We were engaged in a titanic struggle to determine not simply our fates, but the fate of the world, its history, and every man, woman and child residing upon it - even the poor ones, who Rafe would normally consider not to count.

We approached that struggle in the glorious tradition of British amateurism, eschewing consideration, logic and investigation in favour of action, intuition, and a willingness to kick down doors with little or no idea of what lay beyond - which admittedly turned out to be a slight mistake when Jones came face to face with a Balkan assassin and bit the big one. We felt that there was no problem, however big, however deadly, and however sanity destroying, that couldn't be solved by a liberal application of witty comebacks, stiff drinks, and the occasional act of petty, random violence.

The way we met our doom was thus entirely appropriate. The villain was despatched. The world was saved. But we were not. And when we realised this, at ten minutes past five in the afternoon with only fifty minutes until the ticking corruption within our bodies was set to consume us, we did not complain. We did not cry.

No.

We set forth with haste to the nearest drinking establishment and proceeded to make as big a dent in the last thirty-four pounds in the kitty as two men can make in a little over half an hour.

Disintegrating into a pool of goo in a random bar at an embarrassingly early time in the evening is obviously not how Rafe would have wanted to go. But I'd like to think that he faced his death in the manner he would have wished: a drink in one hand, and a barmaid in the other.

I'll miss Rafe. On my shortlist of favourite characters of all time, only Fat Gregor comes close. He started off bonkers and proceeded to go insane, but he was always very fun to play.

Oh well, onwards and upwards.

We've got Trail of Cthulhu and might perhaps give it a test drive.

Tags: call of cthulhu, orient express

I realised that there were some omissions from my previous post about my CoC character Ralph's plans for founding his own country.

Firstly, when I said I'd get the British government to allow me to absorb Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) into Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), I should also have added that I'd have grabbed Nyasaland (Malawi) as well, giving me access to Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi). There are a number of social and geo-political reasons for this, but the most important one is that gives me a nice beach to build a holiday home next to.

Also, in addition to building my aircraft-carrying airship, HMHAS Victory, I also plan to build an aircraft-carrying train. The train will have all the features you'd expect from such a train - saloon, dining car, luxury quarters, stables for the horses and bunk cabins for the staff - plus a lot that you wouldn't. They include:

* A dartboard. The Orient Express didn't have this, for reasons I considered ludicrous. (It had to do with sharp bends and unfortunate accidents).

* A flatbed containing a naval style turret and cannon (for when you fancy shelling a few elephants before lunch).

* A hanger carriage containing a naval-style fighter with folding wings and an arrester hook. A lift will transport it up to a flight deck built on top of the carriage, where a catapult (helped by the drivers pushing the train's speed to the max) will launch it into the air. Upon the end of the flight, it will land - again helped by the speed of the train - back on the flight deck, with arrester wires stopping it. (Obviously, you do need to pick a straight section of track without bridges or tunnels or you could have a very unfortunate accident).

I've also been considering the issues of Halthorpia's coat-of-arms, motto, and national anthem.

On the subject of the coat-of-arms, I think the best thing to do is to take the Halthorpe-Halthorpe family coat-of-arms and basically bling them up a bit.

I think the motto should be the latin translation of something like: The leader speaks, the people act.

And for the anthem, I've got as far as:

Arise, stand proud Halthorpians,
And salute your glorious leader.

...but am stuck for the next lines. Any thoughts?

It's quite fun having a sanity of 6!

Tags: call of cthulhu, halthorpia

"So you're saying she's called Doña Delgardo not Donna Delgardo?"

If I'd have known she was an aristocrat not a scrubber I might have treated her a bit better over the last ten or so play sessions. Oh well. We're in the final stages now of the Horror on the Orient Express campaign, and although we do face one big last challenge, thoughts are already starting to turn to what our characters will do next.

My PC, ex-WWI fighter pilot and now British Member of Parliament Ralph Halthorpe-Halthorpe MP BA DFC (pronounced Rafe Haltrop-Halthorpe), has a plan. Due to a number of unfortunate news stories that might be about to come out, combined with a number of unfortunate communications with the Tory group's chief whip, he's going to leave the UK in seek of new challenges.

The plan, with milestones/targets, is as follows:

1923: Emigrate to the self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe).

1924: Get elected to the Southern Rhodesian Parliament. Given that the electorate consists of about 20,000 white farmers, all descended from unsophisticated stock, while Ralph is of the finest of blue-blood nobility and a former rising star of the British Conservative party, this will clearly be an easy task.

1925: Get appointed Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia. See above milestone for comments on the ease of achieving this target. Appoint Drake (TAFKAC's private-eye PC) as Minister for Internal Security. Appoint Dalton (General Tangent's journalist PC) as Minister of Information. Task Drake with the long term task of liquidating the Opposition (plus any dissenters on the government benches). Task Dalton with keeping this quiet.

1926: Persuade British government to merge the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (modern-day Zambia) in with Southern Rhodesia. Might have to call in a few favours with chaps at the club to do this. Call whole colony Rhodesia.

1927: Rename Rhodesia to Halthorpia (pronounced "Halthorpia", inhabitants to be called "Halthorpians") and Sailsbury, the capital, to Halthorph (pronounced "Haltrop"). Rename Lusaka to Ralph. Dissolve parliament, declare myself "Leader" (combing the roles of Prime Minister and Governor-General). Announce that Halthorpia is now an independent dominion and that King George V now has an additional title, that of King of Halthorpia. Invite him to come and visit. (Might have to pull in a few more favours down the club to prevent an invasion by the United Kingdom, but it's unlikely they'll have much stomach for it). Note: with this one act, I will totally remove the problem that in our timeline bedeviled Rhodesia from its formation in 1922 to its bloody end in 1979 - that of its undemocratic rule by its white minority. By contrast, Halthorpia will be ruled under a non-racist system of one man one vote. I will of course be the man, and I'll have the vote.

1928: Construct HMHAS Victory, a rigid airship of the Zeppelin type. The Victory will contain luxury quarters for myself and my staff, have a golf driving range on the upper surface, and a hanger containing a couple of biplane fighters, so I can go on a few strafing runs after breakfast. Also start building up the Halthorpian army and the Royal Halthorpian Air Force.

1929: Invade the Belgian Congo to capture the mineral-rich Lubambashi salient that juts into northern Halthorpia.

1930: Invade the Portuguese colony of Mozambique and capture the central area containing the port of Beira, thus giving Halthorpia access to the sea.

1931-onwards: Relax and enjoy the good life (interspersed with whatever 1930s CoC campaign we choose to undertake).

A man can dream big when he's got a sanity of 6 (plus criminal psychosis, megalomania and multiple-personality disorder).

It's been a tough campaign.

Tags: call of cthulhu, halthorpia

We've been getting very organised of late, writing down lots of notes about NPCs on index cards. Unfortunately, it's still me we're talking about, so I'm still having the following sort of conversation with NPCs.

Me: So... [looks at index card, sees that he has a book on vases] How's the book going?

NPC: [confused] Book?

TAFKAC: [Screaming] It was in his room! We only know about it because I broke in when he wasn't there and found it!

Tags: call of cthulhu, orient express

Squadron Leader Ralph Charles Arthur George Halthorpe-Halthorpe MP BA DFC on how the holding of a fake birthday party in the saloon as a cover whilst one PC burgles the other guests' cabins can be metaphorically described as a maneuver from a game of Rugby Football:

"Now you see, you can visualise this in the sense of a game of rugby!"

"How so?"

"Well the party's just like a rolling maul, sucking in all the guests and conductors and thus creating space for Mr Drake to operate on the blind side."

"The blind side?"

"The corridor in the sleeping carriage."

"Right. So which position are you in this game?"

"I'm the fly half of course, making the essential leadership decisions."

"So I am the winger or something?"

"Yes. And Jones is the full-back. Anything I can't be bothered to deal with, I'll just let go by on the assumption that he'll sort it out."

Tags: call of cthulhu, roleplaying