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Drives are integral to
the mechanics of the game, because failing to follow your Drive will
cause you to lose Stability. Stability is your resistance to mental
trauma, and is linked to the insanity rules we mentioned earlier;
ignoring your Drive and losing stability will make you more
susceptible to the effects of insanity. Following your Drive may
cause you to do reckless, dangerous, or downright dumb-ass things,
which perfectly models horror movies where otherwise smart
protagonists wander down darkened stairwells in the haunted castle,
alone, with no weapons. Your GM will tell you when your PC's Drive
kicks in during the adventure, and it's then your choice to follow
that impulse and maybe blunder into some dangerous situation or
ignore it and accrue Stability penalties. I'm sure you can see
where both options have their fun points.
You next choose
Abilities for your dude, in addition to the Occupational Abilities
you already received. In Trail, abilities are divided into
"Investigative" and "General." The GUMSHOE game system's basic
philosophy is that characters should always find whatever clues they
need during an adventure to advance the plot, provided that they use
some relevant skill to research the problem or investigate the
situation. There's no roll to find fingerprints, or notice a letter
under a desk, or find a secret passageway behind the bookshelf, as
long as those things are important to the storyline. If your PC has
an ability that would allow her to reasonably find said clues, you
simply have to state to the GM that you're using those skills, and
voila! You've got what you need to move the plot along.
Investigative
Abilities include academic, interpersonal, and technical skills.
Accounting, medicine, astronomy, locksmithing, photography, history,
flattery, art… these are all abilities that can be used to find
clues during the adventure, as long as you can justify a method of
using them in the game to uncover the evidence.
General abilities
aren't related to investigation, and include driving, disguise,
piloting, riding, stealth, weapons use, and other more-or-less
physical skills. These abilities generally require rolls to perform
more than rudimentary tasks, and don't guarantee your success.
You "buy" all your
selected skills during char gen using Build Points. Putting points
into investigative abilities allows you to 'spend' those points
later in the game to achieve more success with a skill. For example,
if you have the investigative ability of archaeology, you can use it
to automatically find clues based on archaeological data. Say, you
recognize that a statuette on the NPCs shelf is from 8th
century Russia. But, if you've put a few points into your
archaeology skill, you could ask the GM to allow you to spend a
skill point… and know that not only is the statuette from Russia,
but that it was recently purchased on the black market. So, by
spending an archaeology skill point, you've discovered that the NPC
deals in black market merchandise, which may be important to the
storyline. So while it's not strictly necessary to have
investigative skills bumped up a few levels with Build Points, it
certainly doesn't hurt.
With physical skills,
which require rolls, points may be added to rolls for better
success. So if your criminal PC has the filch skill, you may want to
try to pickpocket the iron key from the belt of the abbot in the old
Italian monastery. If you think the key is important to the
adventure, and so you don’t want to blow the roll, you could spend a
few points from your filch skill and add them to your roll. Points
spent this way are gone for the adventure, but replenish between
game sessions.
The simple mechanic
for task checks in ToC is rolling a single D6 against a
difficulty number set by the GM. The number is usually between 2 and
8, with those upper numbers obviously being impossible to reach
without spending skill points.
In a contest between
two or more characters, skill rolls are made by all parties involved
until one fails a roll. So chases, grappling, stalking, even perhaps
sporting matches go from round to round until someone blows their
roll. In these cases, players should try to think of clever things
they could do to induce penalties in their opponents' rolls.
To hit someone in
combat, you have to beat their Hit Threshold number. Normally, this
is a 3, but tougher or quicker opponents may have a 4. Nasty
monsters may have much higher Thresholds, if they're strong or
armored or partially incorporeal. Mooks or less competent NPCs may
have lower Thresholds, going down as easy as a sack of turnips in an
elevator shaft.
Once struck in
combat, a victim takes damage from his Health score. Health is an
ability like the others, so you can buy levels in your Health score
if you want to be abnormally combat-worthy. In the Classic style of
play, Health is capped at 12, but Pulp style PCs can have higher
scores to reflect their rugged macho-ness. Anyway, you lose Health
points depending on the weapon you were hit with, but you're not
really in trouble until you get into the negative numbers. Up to -5,
you're injured. Between -6 and -11, you're pretty damn wounded,
bleedin' all over the place. At -12 or below, you're toast. At any
negative level, you'll need to roll to stay conscious, though.
Damage is rolled on
the D6, with modifiers based on lethality. Fists get -2 damage on
the damage roll, being kinda' soft, while an artillery strike will
do +18. (No kiddin'. It's in the book, man.) Most swords, clubs,
tire irons, etc. don't have a modifier, so just try to roll well.
Finally, the rules
section wraps up with the Pillars of Sanity. See, with all the
evilness sucking your PCs' sanity and stability scores away each
adventure, you need a place to recharge your spiritual batteries, in
order to keep fighting the good fight. Each PC should choose
something that they spend time doing to regain their faith in
humanity, to encourage themselves, and to unwind after battling the
Scuttling Horror of Devonshire. PCs who engage in this relaxing
activity or rest in their safe place can regain stability and sanity
points, albeit slowly. While they're doing that, the GM can hand out
Build Points as rewards for the adventure successfully completed,
and you can use those puppies to improve your PC just as you did
during char gen.
That's it for the
rules, really. They take up about half the book.
The second half is a
GM wonderland of info. There's a creature compendium of all sorts of
spooky and scary creatures of ickiness to send after the
investigators, a full blown adventure set in Cleveland, a section
describing life in the 1930s (including a list of prices for common
items), and a full chapter on the Cthulhu Mythos. This details the
elder gods like Cthulhu and his ilk, their powers, the rumors about
them, and their cults' goals. There's a section on spells and magic
rituals to add flavor to the proceedings, and pages of notes about
places and people of interest around the world where your occult
adventures could take place. And finally there's the helpful GM
section, with ideas on how to run a successful campaign, and how to
best use the GUMSHOE system effectively.
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THE NEUTRAL
While I'm not anything
holding against the game itself, I don't know that this version of
the venerable CoC line has anything to offer over its
predecessors. I only ever played one other game of CoC, and
that was many years ago at GenCon, and I don't even know
what edition that was. I do recall that other editions of Call of
Cthulhu use a percentage-based skill system, and have perhaps a
wider range of skills, and use different (I would say harsher)
mechanics for the insanity rules. But really, I have little to
compare this set of rules to, as I've never owned another version.
The
GUMSHOE vibe seems adequate enough. It
didn't blow my knickers off with any truly innovative zing, but it
certainly works really well as a rules- light system. If you're
looking for some more number- intensive or complex rules, you may
prefer a different version of Cthulhu.
So, I guess if you're
looking to get a campaign of Cthulhu going, I can't tell you whether
this is a better system than any of the other six out there
or not. You're
on your own, amigo. Sorry. But I can tell you that this
one works just fine, and is way simple while still being
dramatic, so it's certainly one I'd suggest that newcomers look
into.
THE
EVIL
Evil? Why, don’t be
silly! There's nothing evil about this game! Heavens, where do you
get these trite notions?
Hey, do me a favor,
and lie down on this onyx slab for a moment, will you? … Hm, what?
What knife? … Oh, this ceremonial sacrificial knife? Oh,
nothing. I'm just moving it so you don't get hurt.
Hey! Where are you
going??
Crap. The other Dark
Priests of Shub Niggurath are gonna bitch if I miss my quota again…
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