I am running the haunting for a group of new Cthulhu players. All are experienced role players, mainly in Dungeons & Dragons. I had two different NPC’s tell them they wanted research done on the house to learn the history of that house. One was Mr. Knot and the other was his attorney that was there for the meeting. The group chose to go to the insane asylum and meet with the Marcarios and then went straight to the house. Should I have just stopped right then and there and told them they need to go do research? I want them to play how they will play. I had two ho temporarily insane And one was nearly killed by the bed, but used to Luck points to match the save.

Hey, so, I think I have a pretty good grasp on how the system works, but I really just have one question: How do skill checks work if you don't have an ability score? Can you even roll them? Like, if an investigator doesn't have proficiency in firearms, but they pick up a gun to use, can they still use the gun, or is it an automatic failure?

Thanks!

I understand this is hypergeometric distribution, but I don't need the entirety of the subject. Does anyone know any good videos or documents on the subject? Looking to use the math for CoC and DnD.

Thanks in advance!

The Lightless Beacon is designed as a two hour demo scenario for players that want to start their descent into madness with the Call of Cthulhu tabletop roleplaying game.

The characters will be thrust right into the action as they emerge shipwrecked on an island just off the coast of Massachusetts in 1926.

This game is completely beginner-friendly. Zero experience is necessary, all rules will be explained during play, and pre-generated characters will be provided.

Sign Up via: https://startplaying.games/adventure/cm3iv6wmo00139608qlf92i31

Hi, I’m looking for a Call of Cthulhu adventure that’s not too serious because I want to host a game for my sister, brother and mom. My mom and my brother are very new to pen and paper so I want to ease them into the world of Cthulhu instead of going for a dark and serious adventure right away.

Hallo, ich suche ein Call of Cthulhu Abenteuer welches nicht zu ernst ist da ich für meine Schwester, Bruder und Mutter ein Abenteuer hosten möchte aber meine Mutter und mein Bruder neu sind was Pen and Paper angeht.

Darum will ich nichts zu Düsteres spielen um sie langsam in die Welt von Cthulhu einführen zu können.

Edit: added the English to the post. I somehow managed not to realize that I wrote it down in German

So, the spell has 3 hours of casting time and is quite costly. It affects a target, with a very deadly effect. How is that supposed to work? The spell didn't specifiy that it needs, or works with using a material or other connectuon to the target, or that the caster does not need to adhere to the line of sight rule. I just cant visualize a sorcerer sitting and watching someone for 3 hours, when casting the spell. Could the effect be put on "hold", thus being cast preemptively and "using it up" later? Or maybe tha caster onlly needs to visualize the target and send forth the Black?

Essentially, this problem extends to other spells as well, with long casting times, but effects contradicting that.

Also, it is a bit strange that the Call the Black spell in Doors to Darkness's None More Black scenario is a lot cheaper than the one in the Gtand Grimoire. Does the former supposed to be a deeper magic version?

Can someone send me a video or explain me how a combat works?

I am currently running this campaign and just finished chapter one where three out of four players were kidnapped by the fungi on the final attack on the farm. The group is a DnD group originally and the players are approaching some situations a little too gung-ho so I had to show them what game we are playing. It was pretty brutal but I didn't want the players to think this game is risk free. I feel I have them plenty of warning shots so "it's off with their heads".

For others who have had players kidnapped as early as chapter one. Did you reintroduce any of these, now brain swapped, bodies later in the campaign? Would love to get your advice and stories!

When one person fails a skill check like mechanical repair, another perdón from the same team can try It again?

Im starting to máster call of chtullu games. Should i tell the players wich ability should they use in every moment, or should i wait for them to ask me if they can use them?

Hi, I’m about to run Lightless Beacon for a new group of players with limited playing time. The handwritten handouts for Lightless Beacon are difficult to read. I’m wondering if someone has access to typed versions of these so that the players don’t have to spend much time just decoding them? Many thanks!

Hello all!

I am a Game Master that has been recently branching out into the realm of PbP's, and while I've been doing more on the advenure side, I've been wanting to run a Call of Cthulhu Play-by-Post and was wondering if anyone knew of any archives of either forum based PbP's, or would have access to a any discord archives that they would be willing to let an aspiring CoC PbP Keeper view to get an idea of how things work in that setting!

Thanks for any help you can give!

Hello hello,

I'm running a MoN campaign and, a little surprisingly, my players have tipped their hand and drawn the ire of Gavigan so it's time to bring in The Thing In The Fog. However, I'm struggling to figure out how to really bring it to life and make it a genuinely scary experience. I'm a very visual person so it doesn't translate that well to an invisible monster! The stage is set with the London Fog, the poor breathing conditions, getting lost in the winding streets flooded by thick fog.

Does anyone have suggested reading to help inspire this monster to the horror my players deserve? Anything that handles a genuinely invisible (or nearly impossible to see) monstrosity that maybe uses the other senses to paint a terrifying picture. Or maybe anything that describes that clawing, choking feeling. Ideally a short story but I'm open to anything!

Thank you!

It took a year and a half of weekly play but we did it!

Our order was Peru -> America -> England -> China -> Australia -> Egypt -> Kenya

Here are some highlights from the last session:

• One player losing all his sanity when seeing the Bloody Tongue, and as a blaze of glory strapped lots of dynamite to himself and sacrificed himself to the god, blowing it up (upon which it transformed again, whoops lol)

• In the chaos of the birthing ritual, they snuck around the edge of the room with some lightning guns and blew up M'Weru and the Spawn

• One of the previous player characters who went insane in Egypt and joined the baddies tried to escape by making a time gate back to Great Dragon Island before they blew up the rocket. My player stopped him by casting dominate on him to force him to instead close the gate and ride the rocket directly onto the roof of the volcano cave.

• Another player character who had gone mostly insane already to the extent that he believed his stuffed rabbit was the avatar of "The God of Smiles" (long story lol) used magic and incredible persuasive rolls to convince the rest of the cult to follow him instead as the new leader of the "Cult of Smiles", ending the Cult of the Bloody Tongue once and for all

• They watched the total eclipse together. Following which they heard the cheers of a human-ish avatar of Nyarlathotep behind them, applauding them for a "hilarious" show with such chaos and insanity over the last few months, transforming himself between a bunch of his avatars to prove he's got a thousand more plans with a thousand more faces, he doesn't really care about such a small delay, and promising the world still end one day, before disappearing in smoke (and driving another player completely insane lol)

So yeah a totally great finale!

As a whole I enjoyed the campaign. Previously we had done the Two Headed Serpent. I think the players liked THS better due to its very fast pace and larger than life action, but I think I liked and preferred the challenge and complexity of such an open ended sandboxy campaign as Masks.

I'm not sure yet what we'll do next in terms of a long-form campaign. Right now I'm doing a bunch of one-shots of Mothership with them which is amazing fun but not really as conducive to a huge multi-month epic campaign as [Pulp] Cthulhu. I'm a player in a campaign of Cold Fire Within so I'm not going to run that. I'm leaning towards either Horror on the Orient Express, Eternal Lies, or Impossible Landscapes. Any thoughts?

TLDR: Im looking for scenarios where during the adventure mob player characters can meet and befriend scholarly NPCs who can later naturally send them on more scholarly Call of Cthulhu scenarios. Alternatively suggestions for mob oriented scenarios or ones that can easily be adapted for mob characters are also welcome.

Im a newish Keeper/DM looking for a scenario that can introduce mob players to scholarly NPCs. I've previously run The Haunting, The Lightless Beacon, Genius Loci, and Missed Dues, all with mob characters. Missed Dues was the most recent one (and played about a year after Genius Loci) and my players really enjoyed it.

While I like the mob gameplay. I want to explore the investigative side of CoC more. The issue is many of the scenarios are a bit challenging for a less experienced DM like me to adapt for mob characters. Right now my plan is to run a mob oriented None More Black, but I cant see a good way to introduce the characters to scholarly NPCs who will then be able to believably have reason to send these mob characters on adventures.

Im looking for a scenario which:
1: Involves mob characters but introduces them to scholarly NPCs
2: Provides a believable reason for those NPCs to later involve the mob characters in investigations (For example: "You handled X mystery I was caught up in, can you help me with Y."

Right now the only scenario I can think of is Blackwater Creek. Issue is I specifically want to run it from the scholarly side, so I would prefer alternatives.

Also any scenarios that just make sense for mob investigators or can be easily converted to suit them would be nice.

Additional Context:
One of the player characters is a Miskatonic student with mob debts, which can help me with my issues, but I find the idea of a professor randomly asking a student to help with an issue strange.
Also one of my player's died during Missed Dues and their new character is a mob crony who hasnt met the rest of them and I was going to use O'Shea in None More Black to introduce them at the start.

I am very proud to announce that I’ve stepped up my game significantly with my newest scenario “The White Circle”, in terms of production value and overall quality. I have teamed up with the really talented people at The Yellow Hand, and together we have created 38 pages of a well-researched and beautiful-looking scenario. A group of self-appointed “social engineers” want to rid Saint Paul of “criminal, simple-minded trash” through the execution of dark magic, and have undesirable elements simply disappear from our reality. A member of the group is racked with a guilty conscience and asks the investigators to intervene. But do they have what it takes to block the call from Carcosa?
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/502370/the-white-circle-a-1920s-call-of-cthulhu-scenario-miskatonic-repository

Hello. I'm here looking for your wisdom keepers. I'm running a CoC campaign with my friends that is inspired in the Mountains madness tale, and now my players are in a research facility and I want to create an atmosphere like that in the Alien movies and the RPG. So... I would like to know if there is a monster in the call of Cthulhu lore with similar traits yo those of the xenomorph, no centered in the physical aspect, but in the skills, power and abilities.

Btw, sorry for my English, is not my first language. I hope to make me understand with my poor skills.

Hi all!

Looking for background music during tabletop play. I use YouTube, so preference is that format if possible.

Looking for:

• General melodic background music.

• Melodic, creepy stuff for travelling.

• Creepy, suspenseful stuff for investigating.

• Rhythmic battle music that isn't too intense or 'epic'.

The longer the tracks/playlists are, the better. Extra points for good extended tracks!

Thanks in advance everyone!

I'm making some pregen characters sheets for a one-shot as backups so my group can jump in quickly if our regular campaign schedule changes.

So far I have made the pregens just with occupations, skills, age, and CR prewritten, leaving everything else like backstory, name, etc., for the players to fill in on before the game if and when we play.

Is this a good way to go about it? I know some GMs write backstories for their pregens, I just think my players would prefer coming up with their own.

Thanks!

My group of friends have been playing D&D together very frequently for ~5 years. We've been playing CoC more recently, finishing about 8 shortish scenarios. Most of them have been survival-horror which didn't require alot of actual detective work, ie. Dead Light, The Dare, Edge of Darkness, Grindhouse scenario Highway of Blood, some others i forgot. We did Blackwater Creek and it kind of blew up quickly into a fight.

Currently a player is taking a turn at DMing and is running a very fun and interesting Twin Peaks style homebrew scenario which is heavily reliant on detective work. We are two FBI agents and local deputy.

The problem is a common one for people coming from D&D - the impulse to solve most problems with aggression, kidnapping, rough interrogation etc. It feels players get easily lost, ie. the DM pointed out to us last session we hadn't thought to recreate the day of the incident, we had forgotten to interview some key witnesses. It feels like the players get caught up in the moment with the RP and we don't have experience actually doing detective work. I think we all want to be better at it, but our instincts / practise is not there yet.

Is there any advice anyone has, or perhaps some sort of supplement/guide for players on kind of blueprint things detectives do? I know we all have seen a hundred cop/detective movies/films so it should be obvious, but there you go.

I admit part of the problem in this scenario is surely because its homebrew and not a published scenario that would make it easier for players to find and follow clues, what to do next and so on. I'm back to DMing soon and planning on running Tell Me, Have you seen the Yellow Sign? and getting concerned it'll just turn into a shootout :)

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: I'm reading through the "Investigative Procedures" section of the Investigators Handbook and i reckon i can create a basic guide from this, if i can't find a premade one elsewhere.

EDIT: I am normally our GM but not for this current game where im noticing my co-players are struggling to actually do detective work. I think i know most of the GM tricks, my main questions here about about the players - but i appreciate perhaps half of that is the GM helping the players to help themselves.

I'm working on a scenario set in 1979 las Vegas, and I wanted to narrow the scope of the mystery to two resorts. I'm basing the two hotels off Caesar's palace and the Flamingo Hotel. IRL they are across the street from each other, the flamingo was the last Mafia-owned hotel and Caesar's palace was a large leap forward in the "corporatization" of Las Vegas.

I want to call the Caesars stand-in "the Gilgamesh", swapping the Roman theme for a Mesopotamian theme. But I don't know what to change the Flamingo to...

Ideas I have so far are "the Ibis" "Bird of paradise" just "Paradise" "Pheonix" and "Peacock", and none of them feel quite right. I kind of want to imply that it's a dated hotel that is past it's prime, and is the last bastion of a struggling mafia.

Feel free to comment your ideas. Thanks!

Title. Want to run a christmas themed one shot for my investigators. I was wondering if anyone has ran this one and what their thoughts are on it. Also if you know another Christmas themed scenarios and have any opinion on those I’d love to hear that as well.

I was directed to the Call of Cthulhu RPG through another Cthulhu sub.

I'm into miniature wargaming but am new to the Cthulhu mythos. I was thinking about creating a cult of Yig and am wondering if there is any information about the cultists. For example, would there be any specific robe/outfit colors, symbols, etc.? What motivates the human cultists to worship Yig, and that sort of thing? I've searched online but haven't found a lot of information, but I assume this is a more obscure topic.

Hello everyone! Beginner keeper here.

So far I've run three adventures (Haunting, Chasing papers and Forget me Not). Forget me Not I tried to ran like 3 times, but people would cancel or wouldn't feel like it, so it became kind of a cursed campaign for me.

Lastly I managed to ran it last week and had a blast. People got really into it and it ended with a chase scene with Vanessa while one of the players was desperately trying to read the book and learn the spells.

However, one friend (who also played The Haunting) tood me that, though he really enjoyed it, the idea of getting into town, getting to talk to locals and having the "final boss area" accessible from the get go (debatable now that I think about it, since final boss is more likely to be Vanessa rather than Eihort) gave him similar feelings, and wondered if all one shots were structured similar to that.

So I ask that question here. Are one shots usually investigate + go to bad place? As a one shot for other game could be do X dungeon? Is it a problem inherent to the system, or how I run it, or how the player perceived and played his character?

I didn't get the same complaint from both other friends who were present at Haunting but my insecurity made me feel at least one of them might be pulling their punches.

(I could always just run longer scenarios tho).

I ran a solo game where my character fumbled an intellegence check and stuck his head through a magic mirror....and ended up seeing one of these things. Problem is im not sure what would be a fair time frame for when it starts hunting him; i know the keepers rule book has a formula about when it shows up based on how far back in the past.....the problem is i have no idea what to pick for the past date.

The lore says they're from before time but if you go by anything around the big bang with the rulebook fornula it litterally would never pop up in your life time.

If there are cthulhu keepers who would like to grab a pint and brainstorm why not post your city here? I say city cos if you live in the Scottish highlands or rural Montana this idea will not work. Note I am in Portland Oregon so probably will not work here either!

Hey all - just wanted to make a recommendation for a show that might give you some modern CoC vibes.

Teacup is a science fiction horror series based on the novel Stinger by Robert McCammon. I haven’t read it but as I’m watching it I’m seeing it as a perfect scenario for an adventure.

A family on a ranch is suddenly isolated by an invisible and deadly force. Neighbors get involved and create conflict and help. And trust me when I say there’re some subtle Lovercraftian horrors that await them. As I’m watching it I can’t help but think “Oh there’s a sanity check” and “This would be an easy map to make” etc.

Just thought I’d pass it along if you’re looking for a show to binge!