4 days into the Cthulhu sandbox expedition. Morale and Cheetos are running low. I’ve hit a second snag; Call of Cthulhu’s level up system. Specifically, there isn’t one.
If you do particularly well at some skill in Call of Cthulhu, the DM might tell you to give yourself an experience check – which means that you can roll to see if you learnt anything, then roll a second dice to see how much your skill increases by. You have to convince the DM and the Dice that you deserve an upgrade – it’s totally out of your personal control. Even that is just a straight stat upgrade – you don’t get a cool new tool to use after playing well.
The effect of this is that there’s no real reward for tracking down and defeating horrible monsters, only insanity and death. Which means that either the DM needs to force the players into conflict at every turn, or the players have to almost conspire against their characters to get into the reason they’re playing the game- conflict with horrible monsters. Because it’s horror, you have to constantly remind them how bad an idea this all is and how they’re all going to die and how easy it would be to turn back, too.
Now, I can see how these things make total sense in a story-based campaign. But if I’m giving these guys free rein, what possible reason would they have to go out and attack horrible monsters? Only the fact that it’s the point of the game. If I want to encourage my players to fly across the world busting ass, I’m going to need some kind of Experience system.
There is one really nice system for getting cool new tools, bound to your player character; getting magic from Horrible Monsters. My players quickly realized this was the best way to become powerful, and started sacrificing everything they could find to Glimmering Jim. Buying magic allows you to have some agency in choosing improvements that only you can use, but it’s still dangerous and uncertain – you can’t know how it’ll turn out for sure. As is Right; you should never just buy magic from a shop. I’d like all magic systems to be more like that, but I need something more solid and certain.
My solution: An international spy agency.
THE KEPLER CLUB
To do:
-Establish bases
-Rescue and Recruit specialists
-Stop the Great Depression
-Defeat horrible monsters
-Save world
When they enter the world, their old friend Wolf Abrams is going to find them, looking more grizzled and hard-worn than ever. He’s been working underground, trying to form an organized resistance against Cthulhu. He’s got plans. If we do this, and if we’re smart, he says, we could literally no joke save the entire goddamn world.
He’s got a tech guy and maybe a transport guy living out of his basement. I’ve been investigating Cthulhu Sweat lately, sez the techie, if you bring me a jar-full I could probably make some kind of ray-gun for you. If only we had a base established in Mexico, goes the transport guy, I could ferry you across the pacific ocean. Wolf Abrams himself has a list of people that’d be mighty helpful to the movement if they were recruited. Henry Ford, Nikola Tesla, Dagny Taggart. Frank Roosevelt. Rescuing each of them gives you cool new items, helpful abilities, spells. After you rescue them they’re in your base, and you can call them in for help on missions or get them to make you cool things. Find Amelia Earhart and you’ve got the best pilot around; Marie Laveau could help you out with Voodoo Secrets. As you recruit more people and establish more bases the organization would slowly grow to become an international team of honed veterans.
This way, I’m internalizing the EXP system into the games fiction, and making it revolve around the access to tools and items the players have, instead of their abilities. I have to make the organization totally weak, mind you. The PC’s will be able to contact them by phone, which means that they’ll have no backup whenever they go into the wilderness (Thank god it’s the 1930’s. I’ve got no idea how anyone makes a CoC adventure with mobile phones). The massive travel times mean the PC’s will have to bring people along if they really want backup, and anyone they bring along with them won’t be making cool shit for them at home.
And, of course, there’ll be a rival organization. I’m thinking Agents of Coldsnap, a devilish russian-german organization devoted to ensuring nazi-communist superiority through occult means. They recruit their agents by kidnapping them off the streets, force-feeding them vodka and exposing them to cthulonian horrors. Their main occult strike team will, of course, be composed of evil reflections of the PC’s. The world will be entirely static – if there’s a monster in Mexico then it’s going to stay in Mexico forever until the PC’s show up – but Coldsnap will be constantly active and growing in power, forcing the PC’s to consider travel times and where they go next carefully. If they don’t get to that monster in england fast enough, Coldsnap may get there first.
Help us help you help us all: Posted by Jack McNamee on October 16, 2011.
About Jack McNamee
In the third year of a game design course in Queensland, Australia. Thinking a whole lot about games. Scrabbling desperately against the oncoming future.
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