Books: Trail of Cthulhu, Spirit of the Century

[woodwardiocom]

Trail of Cthulhu RPG by Kenneth Hite

A marvelous representation of how to handle the Cthulhu Mythos in gaming (i.e., with less emphasis on Cthulhu's stats, and more ambiguity as to what exactly he is), including many practical examples of how to actually run the game, in both Purist mode and Pulp mode. Plus, some quite sensible historical analysis of the Mythos, including who invented what when, and for what reasons, including a reasonable defense of Derleth's "four elements" interpretation of the Mythos.

My caveats still include the aforementioned editing problems (e.g., the book says The Nightmare Countries are organized by continent, when in fact they're strictly alphabetical; or, in the transition from p. 195 to 196, the italics mysteriously go away). The rules are also not quite as clear as I would like; I'll need to read 'em again at least once to figure them out. (Though, I'm completely down with the notion that finding clues is a skill test that should automatically succeed. There's no point to stalling a mystery 'cause someone blew a die roll.) Also, the sample adventure needed a straightforward summary of what had actually gone on to generate all those clues. I still don't know why those photographs were taken, and they're the first clue discovered.

However, those are truly just caveats. If you have any interest in classic horror roleplaying, or in the Mythos as a genre, you should pick this up.

Spirit of the Century RPG by Donoghue, Hicks, Balsera

And while you're at it, you should also pick up this charming pulp game. Though the rules are based on the generic Fudge system, they've been modified here to serve the genre. Which is to say, this is an RPG whose core rules are not intended to model reality, but rather to model the way broadly-drawn genre fiction works. I.e., if a character is described as "tough as nails", then "tough as nails" is actually on the character sheet, and the PC gets a bonus when that aspect can reasonably come into play. For example, if you were describing the Shadow, you might say, "He's a grim urban crimefighter, who has the ability to cloud men's minds, and is assisted by a network of agents. He has a menacing laugh, and his catchphrase is, 'Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" This would actually end up on the character sheet as:

• Grim urban crimefighter
• Cloud men's minds
• Network of agents
• Menacing laugh
• Knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men

. . . and if, for example, the player wants to scare some thugs, he invokes his Menacing Laugh aspect, and gets a bonus on the roll.

Plus stunts, a nifty setting, gadgets, &c. Definitely recommended.

Comments

[bluegargantua]

Spirit of the Century, and the FATE system in general are amazingly good.

later
Tom

[scholargipsy.livejournal.com]

Spirit is indeed all that and a bag of chips. It's probably the best pulp game I've ever read in terms of formal rules encouraging functional rock-'em-sock'em gameplay. The setting, such as it is, is uninspiring, but if you're interested in running pulp, there's a wealth of other resources out there. (I loved White Wolf's Adventure because its setting premises were just so nifty, but I like SotC's rules better for high-spirits narrative flavor.)

Spirit of the Century will definitely require proactive players who know the rules well in order to really sing, though. Whereas Adventure!'s dramatic editing is relatively straightforward for players, attribute tagging and the ways attributes of PCs, NPCs, and even settings and objects interact to give players greater narrative agency are definitely trickier concepts. I like them a lot, but even as a near-30-year RPG vet I had to read some rules several times to grok the whole. Or maybe I'm just dense.

Anyway, this is on my short list of games to play Real Soon. (And as a follow-up rec, Pulp Hero is the perfect setting sourcebook to round out a SotC campaign -- it has all the historic and geographic tidbits that Evil Hat's game couldn't squeeze in.)

[drivingblind.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your support! :)

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

What Fred said. :^)