Chapter 10 of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook, “Playing the Game” is one of the most underrated parts of the whole game. It contains so much advice that answers many of the common questions from new Keepers as well as some of the problems that even more experienced Keepers may create in their games. Thirty-seven pages (including illustrations) of condensed advice for running CoC and, frankly, many other games as well. During a recent re-read, I decided to take some notes for myself and so I’ll share some of the insights the book contains below.
Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook cover, © 2015, Chaosium. Inc. Illustration by Sam Lamont
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New Keepers
The Rulebook suggests “The Haunting” (free in the Quick-Start rules) or “Amidst the Ancient Trees” (contained in the same Rulebook) as starter scenarios for new Keepers. I don’t know whether “Amidst” is really the best starter, although I have enjoyed running it several times and look forward to running it again soon at an online convention. It has enough moving parts in terms of different scenes and contingencies that it could be a slight challenge, but it also provides a different angle on the Mythos that many folks might enjoy.
The section on “Finding Players” focuses on setting up in-person groups (and includes a good safety note about meeting people for the first time in a safe public place). I usually play online, myself, although maybe at some point I’ll refer back to this if I get the courage to go deal with humans in meatspace. The Web references for Yog-Sothoth.com (impossible to join and completely opaque to newcomers) and Miskatonic University Podcast (which has a forum but no section for finding new groups) feel a bit awkward, which is the danger of printing references to online sites. Here it is eight years later; would we make the same recommendations? I doubt it.
“Preparing to Play the Game” discusses common basics of TTRPG etiquette and the incredibly important subject of agreeing on tone before the game starts. Many of the problems I see with new groups come down the fact that they didn’t do this. Also, the brief mention of historical social issues feels inadequate but represents a good start. Call of Cthulhu (the game and the original short story) have a lot of bad history to make up for. For clarity, I think Chaosium in recent years has in fact tried hard to do so.
Characters
The chapter includes several pages on character creation from the perspective of the Keeper rather than the players themselves. Tell the players what they need to know (date and location, basic description of the starting situation, suggested occupations, and suggestions for how they know each other). It contrasts “integrated groups” (investigators that know each other and have existing connections), “random groups” (throw them together), and “pre-generated investigators” (common in convention games and other one-shots). The notes about pre-gens have lots of good advice in general: balance the spotlight, tell players what their investigators know rather than what they feel, and keep a brief reference chart for your roster of investigators. There’s a short section about linking investigators in a campaign, but in reality it deals with amending their backstories to keep driving them to investigate the Mythos. After all, what healthy person survives an encounter with a shoggoth and decides to go do it again?
NPCs usually don’t need full stats in advance, although perhaps this can be useful for major villains. Instead, Keepers can use the rule for setting difficulty for opposed rolls: Regular for most things, Hard if the NPC’s skill is at or above 50%, or Extreme if it’s 90% or higher. Of course, things like combat skills will need a bit more determination but even those can often be grabbed from existing NPCs or estimated in advance. Non-combat types can use the base stats for Fighting (Brawl) and Firearms, while thugs and cultists with some combat ability could set those skills to 50% or so. (I might write more about improvising NPCs in the future.)
When a Keeper needs an NPC, try to re-incorporate one that already exists, which creates a feeling of continuity for the players. The book also suggests ensuring that NPCs have roleplaying hooks: not traits and mannerisms, but things like motivations, events, and relationships. There’s a nuanced view of presenting the authorities, which I need to chew on, because it specifically recommends against “uniformly portraying authorities as sleazy opportunists, corrupt fools, and rigid bumpkins”. The idea here is that humanity and civilization should feel worth saving, “however bad humanity can be”.
Has anybody used “Pick-Up NPCs” outside of specific campaigns that call for it, like “Horror on the Orient Express”? This means running a scene or short scenario with simpler NPCs to give the players, but not investigators, more insight into a situation. I’ve never thought of doing this before but am interested in the outcomes.
Rolling the Dice
This is literally the most important part of this chapter and applies to nearly all “traditional” RPGs. Applying the advice here solves nearly all the worst headaches that folks run into. Admittedly, Rules 1-4 sort of repeat themselves, but I believe that’s because they’re so important that it’s worth saying the same thing several different ways to ensure people understand it. (I’ve written about this before myself.)
Dice Rule 1: The Keeper decides when to call for a skill roll. That is to say: sometimes, you don’t need to. Routine tasks in non-dramatic situations don’t need a roll, or perhaps the Keeper wants to move the narrative along to the interesting bits.
Dice Rule 2: Dice don’t tell stories; people do. The Keeper decides what happens on a failed roll, and we have a lot of choices there.
Dice Rule 3: Losing a roll doesn’t necessarily mean failing the goal. Losing a dice roll doesn’t have to mean failing the task, especially on a Pushed roll; the player may still achieve their goal but with a significant negative consequence. Of course, don’t block play on a failure, because then everything just grinds to a halt. (This theme will be repeated in future sections.)
Dice Rule 4: Dice are used to determine who tells the story. There’s a football metaphor here, so that whoever wins the roll gets to “run with the ball for a while”. And if the Keeper ‘wins’ - that is, if the dice do not favor the player - then our job is to “create an interesting outcome” in accordance with the themes of the game. (Seeing a pattern here?)
Dice Rule 5: Avoid consecutive rolls against the same skill. This seems a bit common among some Keepers coming over from Dungeons & Dragons; instead, just adjust the difficulty level to Hard or Extreme, or let a roll ride for a bit.
Dice Rule 6: Roll dice in full view. There are some possible exceptions, but in general Keepers won’t feel tempted to fudge rolls once they remember that failure doesn’t mean the goal isn’t achieved and it definitely doesn’t need to mean “nothing happens”.
"When a player loses a pushed roll, he or she is giving you, the Keeper, license to make the investigators’ lives more difficult… a pushed roll is your chance to push the horror.”
(emphasis original)
Pacing
Fitting its general vibe, the Keeper Rulebook compares the Keeper’s role to that of the conductor of an orchestra. I have seen other games, like Ultraviolet Grasslands, compare the Keeper to the bass player in a band - the same basic idea. We set the tempo and move things along or slow them down as appropriate.
If the game’s gotten stuck or things are moving slowly, unstick them! “Have a man come through the door with a gun,” to quote the noir author Raymond Chandler. Similarly, give the players a chance to breathe sometimes with a slower scene sometimes so they can figure out what to do next; this can still build tension and horror, but not every scene needs to involve a car chase, gunfight, or monster showdown.
This is a game of attrition, though, not a power fantasy: investigators may develop their skills, but at the same time their Sanity and health will slowly erode over extended contact with Mythos threats, and they never outgrow threats.
Finally, avoid “no” responses in favor of “yes and” or “yes but” whenever it can make sense. This doesn’t refer to things that seem wholly impossible in the scope of the game, but to players wanting to try things the Keeper hasn’t prepared for. Build on their ideas and collaborate with them to increase the horror rather than just block things that might seem reasonable. The example references players wanting to call the police: don’t tell them that this doesn’t fit the spirit of the game, but instead tell them they hear strange unearthly voices on the line… or put the police in league with the cult.
Information
The Idea roll is a bit of a mixed bag to me. In essence, if the players are completely stuck and have missed or forgotten a clue that will get them moving, then they can make a roll to get it. The roll determines the circumstances in which they get the clue, not whether they do.
One of the mentioned situations, though, is when “the Keeper never mentioned the clue.” To me, this is a terrible time to call for a roll, because whose fault is that? Just deliver the information in whatever way seems exigent and keep going. But if inexperienced players do in fact need this roll to move them along, then this just determines how much trouble they’re in.
“Disseminating Information” reminds me of my own views on moving away from clue-based investigations. The Keeper should know what happened in sufficient detail. This means that, if the investigators then ask the right questions ("are there footprints in the garden under the window? what size or kind?"), then they can get useful answers to reason about. The fun of the investigation becomes about putting together the clues, figuring out what happened, and making choices about where to go and what to do next, rather than emulating the old point-and-click adventure games.
That said, give information rather than understanding. Describe what they observe or what specific data they collect; let them make deductions themselves.
Perception rolls should be used carefully. There are two general situations in which they should not be used.
If the information is needed for the scenario to progress, do not require a roll. The book calls this information an “obvious clue”, as in “make it obvious” so that the game can keep moving.
If the player describes their investigator looking in exactly the right place, no roll should be required. A player who describes their investigator checking behind the painting to see if there’s anything like a hidden wall safe should be rewarded for investigating!
Rolls can (and potentially should) be required for “obscure clues” that might help them but are not absolutely required for the investigation to continue. Even if the players fail the roll, that increases tension because they know they missed something and may even tempt them to push it. And, as discussed above in Dice Rules, losing a pushed roll should not mean “nothing happens” but should “push the horror”. A pushed Listen roll that fails could mean they hear the cultists coming right around the corner, for instance.
Using the Rules
The vast majority of the game’s rules come down to this:
Regardless of the situation, the players intention defines the goal, and a skill or characteristic is chosen that best suits the situation.
If the situation is reliant upon external circumstances rather than an investigator’s actions then a Luck roll is used.
The book goes on to give some advice about specific situations like casinos, ambushes, swimming & drowning, and strangulation. But all of them come down to suggesting what kind of skill or characteristic to use for a roll and how to track successes and failures.
The book also suggests that, in many situations, Keepers should choose dramatic creativity over verisimilitude. This is something similar to the Rule of Cool. Call of Cthulhu is a game with mind-bending monsters from outside our reality, so rather than having someone simply crumple to the floor when hit by a shotgun blast, let them be blown back through the stained glass window!
Terror and Sanity
Never say the name of the monster. This advice is core to all sorts of horror games. Describe it in horrifying, visceral terms, and if the players give it a name then feel free to use that for reference (but keep the descriptions going when pacing allows). Never say “nightgaunt” but “faceless flying demon straight from a Gothic nightmare”. If the players start to seem a little blasé about the monsters, then turn up the intensity and have the monsters do something terrible.
Add more senses than just sight. Does the monster have a particular smell? Maybe it induces vertigo when it heaves itself into our reality, or everyone around it hears barely-perceptible whispers of a babbling child.
Intelligent Mythos beings don’t negotiate with mere humans any more than we would negotiate with a centipede, and their motivations should be as incomprehensible to us as, say, nuanced political views would be to that same centipede.
That said, the greater the danger, the more fair warning should be given. Don’t fudge rolls, but make sure that players have indications that something utterly nasty and fatal could result from a general course of action: slurping sounds in the distance, corpses drenched in blood, or an insane insight that the house they’re about to purchase sits atop a hell hole.
I’m going to skip over most of the advice on Sanity here because I have a much longer post coming about that. Instead, I’ll just say that, much like the investigators’ back stories, consider failed Sanity rolls and “madness” an opportunity to collaborate with the players. They’ve hopefully already bought into the premise of the game, so let them lean into it.
Similarly, don’t try to scare your players and DEFINITELY DO NOT USE THEIR TRAUMAS. These are your friends, or at least friend-adjacent; if you know they’re suffering something terrible, or that something makes them really suffer, avoid it unless you have their explicit consent. Even then, watch the line carefully: we want our characters to be terrified, not the people around the table.
Ending a Story
I struggle with this a bit, myself. When should we conclude the one-shot, other than when our time slot is up? Sometimes it’s obvious, such as in the case of a big climactic battle. But other times, I just try to get to a reveal of something horrible and end it; I’ve also been known to end a game with “The Lady, or the Tiger?” style ambiguity, though in recent years I’ve steered away from that.
When it comes to investigator death, in general I try not to use that. To be clear, that doesn’t mean removing threats; it means that death is an easy out. “Oops, my investigator got shot in the back by a cultist; time to roll up Harvey Walters, Jr!” is bleh. Instead, maybe the investigator finds themselves captured and tied to an altar, or having a Sanity-blasting vision of their own death before they recover. Remember, this is not a game where a good night’s sleep cures just about everything that could ail them.
The last part of this chapter deals with creating scenarios and campaigns, which I definitely want to address in another post because of its scope.
Final Advice
Don’t skip over this chapter! If you have the game and plan to run it more than just once, take some time with a beverage of your choice and a comfortable place to sit to review it. Come back to it when you feel like your skills as a Keeper have reached a plateau.
Your game and your own fun will increase as a result!
Good to read that you found this chapter useful. Mike and I put everything we could into this chapter.