I cant wait to see Puppet Land resurface so I can fund/buy it.

As I have come to expect from you fine people, another great and informative episode, just please, know you folks are busy and have lives, but please make these more regular?

Cheers!

“He’s Jewish.”

I immediately bought myself a copy of Oath 21 — and it’s just chockablock full of awesome sauce. Sukakpak — what a nicely written little piece. It’s like a haiku of a scenario. Must. Run. It.

But now I must respectfully take you to task.

I think you might’ve misrepresented Cthulhu Dark a bit, here. Sorry Ross — author of Zombies of the World and other fantastic game-related materials — but I disagree strongly that CD necessarily devolves into PvP and wrestling over narrative control. Also disagree that the only way for a player to die is for another player to call for their failure.

The rule on failure: “If someone thinks it would be more interesting if you failed, they describe how you might fail and roll a die.”

This distinction of “more interesting” is a really important one, I think. Yup, it’s open to abuse. One could say that “more hilarious” is a kind of interesting. Tom did. Caleb did. But with some judicious guidance, I do think a Keeper can set the tone for how the rule is used. To encourage a certain flavor, one could say “if someone thinks it would be more Lovecraftian” or “horrific” or “bleak” or “dramatic.”

As written, I believe the rules indicate that the Keeper also has the option to roll against a player for the chance to narrate their failure. In this way, the Keeper can make the game every bit as dark and lethal as the best and worst of CoC.

You can also play it like a comic fiasco, as RPPR did in Caleb’s biblical yarn and in Dead Island. That has got to have something to do with the mood at the table. Ross, I challenge you to run a CD game with a darker tone. I think the tools are there for one.

I also think it’s important to remember that at least half of the die results should not just be a success, but success-with-consequences. Results in the lower half of the 1D6 range indicate that a player may do what they intended, but they could face complications or even some pretty ugly outcomes. Successfully jumping out of a window only to break an ankle and alert the fishmen in the alley — this is hardly a heroic result. So I think ASG’s complaint about this game removing the uncertainty of significant die rolls is misguided.

In addition, Graham has proposed an optional rule to add a hit point-like Harm die that might help some players get over the strictly narrative approach to mortality.

Okay, I’m done perseverating. I just wanted to offer a counterpoint. And I think after reading Sukakpak that it would be a hell of a good scenario to try as an — extra dark — Cthulhu Dark.

To all y’all: please keep making cool stuff. And thanks for the great podcast.

Also thank you all for spreading the cat piss and speedloaders lifestyle.

I ran a 7E playtest group. 7E is better rules for the theme.

We all know that the rules in CoC were pretty broken, although I think much of this was just that they were poorly explained. We just muddled through and let the story carry it, not the rules.

Turns out things are much less clunky in 7E. I can’t really mention any specifics as it’s under NDA, but the revised rules actually increased the fun, tension and horror (yay).

I’m really looking forward to when it comes out and be able to introduce people to the game without aplogies about the system!