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RPGs / Re: Serious injuries question

« on: September 16, 2014, 05:06:18 PM »

It's all the kind of game you want to run. You can go mad with injury rules or you can do hit points or you can do movie injuries. Where the player gimps around in a cast for a month but manages to move fast enough for day-to-day stuff.

I like that, it gives them something to remember and roleplay but won't take them too far out of the action.

Also give out lots of scars, there's a whole box for injuries etc on the back of the sheet, oughtta fill it up with something.

I was mostly coming from the angle of how true to the CoC spirit would me and my players want the game to be. On one hand we're for more realism in these matters but on the other noone would want to take the player out of the game just because he rolled a Jump roll badly.

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RPGs / Re: Serious injuries question

« on: September 15, 2014, 04:26:14 PM »

For Coc I'm a fan of the old "first aid check to heal 1d3 hit points" after one of those events.  They have essentially suffered from Schrodinger's injury.  If they roll well - maybe it wasn't a break, possibly just a bad sprain and a twisted knee or something.  If they roll poorly, it's still a break, but something that they can quick tie a splint to and keep walking around on.

People in real life can walk around for a while with some surprisingly bad injuries.  Especially when their lives are on the line.  Adrenaline and pain killers go a long way.

Another option is to temporarily allow them to move around at full speed when they really need to, but to call for a SAN roll as the agony of trying to run on an injured leg makes the monster chasing you that much more traumatic.

Yes, strangely players never forget about that first aid roll in CoC I think I'm gonna go with some heavy limping (maybe with a little morphine as a bonus?), that would be interesting to keep in mind for both player and me. Using SAN rolls for pain is also an interesting idea

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RPGs / Re: Serious injuries question

« on: September 15, 2014, 04:19:04 PM »

http://fate-srd.com/fate-accelerated/ouch-damage-stress-and-consequences

So essentially the player would receive the analog of a consequence "Heavily limping" and I would modify some rolls for him when he tries to jump/run/dodge etc.

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RPGs / Re: Serious injuries question

« on: September 14, 2014, 07:16:34 PM »

This is not even specific to CoC/DG - but every single RPG with human characters. It's not really a problem, but an issue of style and preference. Published games tend to push it towards a gamey solution i.e. hit points and rapid healing. I tend to go with that, since that works best in my experience.

If you use Fate, you can use consequences/aspects to simulate specific injuries. Maybe house rule a system like that?

Um, I'm not too familiar with Fate, how would you propose it work? I recall listening to RPPR APs that you usually give the player a choice "I will compel you to do X but you will gain Y". Could you explain on the jumping injury example?

The simplest solution would be just to lower the danger level a bit if the end of scenario is not yet near (which I usually do). I could tell the player that had his leg broken that the proper treatment showed that the injury was not that serious.

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RPGs / Re: Serious injuries question

« on: September 14, 2014, 07:08:27 PM »

You can't just heal damage with spells and potions in CoC/DG

Well you CAN, but expect it to be horrifying and sanity-draining. 

This is one of the bigger problems with running difficult situations in CoC/DG, PCs are not designed to be heroic characters and are instead very frail.
In your specific case, I would not break their legs, but make them still take that same damage and walk with a limp (just assign a negative modifier to physical actions involving their legs such as climb, dodge, etc.)

As you say, if a person is not able to contribute to the adventure, it pretty much makes for a boring or frustrating game. It's best to avoid falling into those situations (no pun intended) by being a bit more lenient BEFORE the final confrontation, and then not holding back when they face the BBEG.

Well, I'm running prewritten scenarios and it happens from time to time like the aforementioned example. Another example is "The Haunting", the CoC scenario that everyone has played. There's a scene with the haunted bed there that literally says "roll dodge or get 2D6 damage" with all of the 4 pregens having 10-12 hp. Myself I always try to tone it down but when I see such a scene I have to wonder what was the author's reasoning?

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RPGs / Serious injuries question

« on: September 14, 2014, 04:42:37 PM »

Hi, all.

We've been playing CoC/DG and there's something with serious injuries that leaves me baffled. One of the players can get a serious injury in some situation or a fight in the middle of the game. For example, in the latest game players had to escape from capture by jumping off a roof into a pile of garbage. The module specifically stated it's Jump+20% (Age of Cthulhu 1) to land there or it's 24-feet fall damage. So, sure enough one player misses his roll and breaks a leg (6 hp of damage from falling rules). Can you somehow work around that in a sensible way? Because in reality a broken leg is at least a month of bedtime. Same with damage received during a battle. You can't just heal damage with spells and potions in CoC/DG, it takes a ton of time. And you can't just limp around with everyone else in these cases. So it's like the adventure almost breaks here. What do you do in that kind of situations?

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RPGs / Re: Couple of Call of Cthulhu questions

« on: October 24, 2013, 05:09:05 PM »

Well, I don't think there should be all that many cultists in CoC games, it sounds a little cliche. I'm all for weird shit that cannot be killed by physical damage.

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RPGs / Re: Couple of Call of Cthulhu questions

« on: October 23, 2013, 11:45:07 AM »

Ross seems to know a lot about how to purchase dynamite ....

You could use the method that ASG mentioned at one point and require someone to fail the sanity roll to murder innocent people if they are known to be in the house as well.

Yeah, I was confused because I knew that the house contained only cultists. If there were completely innocent people inside, I'd used that. Though as Ross pointed out, PCs can never be sure themselves, that's what I have to keep in mind from now on.

As to the ethical behavior I do think I might give the player a bit of a stare down if their proposed background is a by the books law enforcement type and the very first thing they do is break into a house or abuse their authority. If you do not want to go the cops showing up for a in your face show down maybe some of the police cannot pin the break in on them but are pretty sure it was them and so stop cooperating. Maybe they file a complaint but it goes into the PCs file and slows their promotion. Maybe nothing directly in game but it goes people consequences to role play.

This is not that easy to think up in the middle of the game so I think the best idea would be to wait until the session ends and think of some proper consequences like that in the time between sessions.

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RPGs / Re: Couple of Call of Cthulhu questions

« on: October 22, 2013, 04:22:14 PM »

1. FBI agents and cops do abuse their authority in real life on a regular basis so that's fine. The main thing is if they get caught. Have some NPC cops show up because some neighbor saw the PCs break into the house. NPC cops will try to arrest the PCs unless the PCs can show them a search warrant (which requires the signature of a judge and the PCs obviously don't have one) - if the PCs refuse to surrender, the situation turns into a firefight or chase scene with the cops. Those PCs are fucked.

Yeah, I'll have to think up some consequences that would not punish them harshly but would make them think some more about how they handle that stuff.

2. Dynamite requires a special license to buy. The license is only given to miners, demolition companies and a few other specialists who have a legitimate need for dynamite. It is hard to get in the 1990s and later.

I'd require a SAN check for dynamiting a house - you never know if the cultists have innocent hostages inside or not.

SAN check, yeah, that's reasonable. Thanks for the ideas!

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RPGs / Couple of Call of Cthulhu questions

« on: October 22, 2013, 10:19:46 AM »

Hey, guys, I'd love to get your insight on a couple questions that I can't answer myself.

I'm playing Call of Cthulhu with my friends (I'm a GM) so the characters are all common people, maybe with some military or police background. The first question is how would you handle the situation where the player playing someone like FBI agent or cop actively abuses this power, for example, being okay with breaking and entering someone's private property without much consideration. Should I, for example, somehow try to punish his character for being unethical or maybe it's a normal thing for you? Give me some thoughts, please.

Another thing is that players finally got around to using dynamite I know that you could get dynamite in USA without any problems in 1920s or 1990s, and it looks like now it's much harder (we're not from US but our modules are generally based there). So, should I restrict general dynamite availability to the players during the 20s and 90s and by how much? I'm a little afraid that if I don't restrict it somehow they would just get a box of it each time and try to dynamite their problems away. Would it be okay for the characters to do that? For example, the characters know that house X is full of cultists that are in the middle of a ritual calling some elder god and they actually believe that having some experience with Mythos and previous encounters. Would they generally be fine with running around the house throwing a lit stick in every window?

"So, we just put a box of dynamite in the car, light the fuse and put a rock on the gas pedal. Then we turn the car towards the house. *sigh* But we're not playing Delta Green..."