Arkham Horror begats Call of Cthulhu

Being down three players last night (Dan Dan the Power Game Man is overseas for awhile, Little Ben has to take a month or two off suddenly, and Big Ben had a cold), we decided to finally play Paul’s copy of Arkham Horror he got for Xmas instead of my Runequest session.. In all honesty, I’m not feeling Runequest like I thought I would. I love the setting, but the super crunch of the combat rules really killed my buzz. I’m going to go back to the drawing board on that for awhile. Like I said a thousand times on this blog, my pet peeve in GMing it to feel like its work. I don’t wanna work during a game. I want to have a couple of beers and paint a picture. I’m all heart and passion at the center, not the crunchy shell. I actually was willing to carry on without using the mind-numbing, high maintenance Strike Rank, but with a couple of the guys being heavily for using it BTB, I just wanted to step back for a bit and take another look before we spent another session trying to adjudicate a battle with the characters and a couple of weapon snakes.

So we finally play AH (the latest version), and it seemed pretty cool. As the only real Lovecraft aficionado in the group, I had to hold back and not bore everybody with the back story of every side street on the Arkham map and all the monsters and books and such. What was weird was they, the Cthulhu novices, seemed to enjoy it a bit more than me. In all honesty, I like a board game to be a little simpler, and to be able to be played inside of three hours with 4 people or less. I’m actually surprised that we finished by 11:30, but I think we fudged a couple of things to be able to get to the battle with the endgame god (in this case it was Yig the serpent god, and we beat him with only one character dying).

We’ll have a better handle on it next time so it will go quicker, but one really good thing came out of this: we got the Lovecraft bug, and I’ll be running some Call of Cthulhu for my next session! Next week at Big Ben’s D&D I’m thinking of taking up a half hour or so for some CoC chargen so we can do less of that when I get the Cthulhu session underway.

Usually this would be a good time to get that weekly gaming in, but some of us are having our schedules become busier on weeknights than usual. Andy is getting involved in some kind of local politics, Terry is going to start bartending at her club a night or two during the week, and in addition to my usual once weekly music practice I want to start learning some new instruments – so all of a sudden we find ourselves dashing about trying to work it out for weekly gaming now. Once or twice a year we have a longer weekend session, and I suggested we try to make that once a month or so to make up for some lost weeknight sessions, so in the long run I think it will be all good and the group will carry on with standard operations bullshit for the foreseeable future.

Runequest - the Buzzkill of Strike Rank

Ran the second Runequest 2nd edition session the other night set in that famous Sartar lane known for its apple orchards. The Tin Inn and environs were still hopping from the Spring festival. I say “Spring” because I have yet to memorize the names of Gloranthan days, weeks, and months, and seasons. As an aside, speaking of the calendar names in RQ, I have been reminded of how much I snagged out of Glorantha as a kid to plug into my game world Acheron (I still hate that name for a game setting, but I was a kid, man). The names for seasons and some of the names of days (such as “Godsday”) were apparently shamelessly ripped-off by me. I totally forgot about that over the decades. That’s OK of course; I hardly ever use them in my D&D game anyway. I get lazy and just call the days Sunday, Monday, Tuesday…

Before I go any further, let me lay out the characters for any Runequest fans who might be reading. Their backgrounds were all rolled out of the RQ 2nd edition chargen section. None of the characters are laymembers of any cults yet (well, Paul’s barbarian “Bjorn” being a herdsmen is automatically a lay member of the storm god Waha).


Catuanda – from the sage-heavy city Jonstown. He himself is scholarly, but like all the other kids he is setting out on the bloody road of violence to better himself physically. Instead of being a follower of Lankhor Mhy, the main knowledge god in Sartar, he went with a minor one (the name escapes me). Has a preference for the long spear, and is pretty lucky with it in combat.

Rowan – from main Sartar city Boldhome. At 21 years old, she is the oldest of the PC’s. Her father was a successful weaver in the city. Like all the new young fighters, ask her why she is setting off down the road to violence and she will tell you “because everybody else is doing it.” She has a liking for the warrior girl goddess Vinga, daughter of Orlanth. This last game she met “Siobhan Lomand,” a Rune Priestess of Vinga, who has offered to make her (and some other girls at the festival) lay members of the Vinga cult. So Terry will probably be the first character in the campaign with a god connection (BTB you need to be a lay member for a year before you can get to the Initiate stage of worship, and all the perks it comes with). Rowan currently uses a short sword as her main weapon.

Bjornheld – the only “barbarian” of the group, Bjorn comes from a sheep herding tribe. He left because they made a lot of fun of him…he has a size of 4. That makes him small. He could wear Vern Troyers kilt. Bjorn makes himself look even smaller by preferring the long spear in combat.

Tensen – From Boldhome. Started with a dagger for combat, but has a bow and is favoring its use. I see a bow-master in the future! This last game Big Ben decided out of the blue that Tensen would be very vocal of his hatred of the Lunar Empire who are occupying Sartar. Just goes to show you, you need a couple of sessions before characters start to differentiate themselves. Even in RQ, where human characters can seem very similar, these characters are standing out from each other pretty good.

Yuri – Little Ben’s new character (LB missed the first session the other week). Guess what? Another townsperson from Boldhome (that makes three character from the capital city). Hasn’t been fleshed out fully yet. I can’t even remember what weapon he used.

Yuri showed up in town while the festival was still going on, and the other characters had finished up their blood combat initiation from the previous game. To give Yuri his own combat, the character volunteer to fight again as teams in the Humakt battle circles.

Which gets me to the topic subject; strike rank. Ah, the buzzkill of it. It’s crunch man. I had forgotten how much there was too it. Too much Call of Cthulhu in the 90’s, where Basic Role Playing left SR out of the mix. The system is soooo easy without SR.

OK, it ain’t rocket science (I have Champions for that). But it requires a lot of rewriting the order folk go in from round to round, especially if they are using missile weapons. Basically, your strike rank is an attacking order based off of weapon length, dexterity, and size. So a fast guy with a spear is going to hit before a slow guy with a dagger, capishe?

Look, I like the grim and gritty nature of RQ combat. Every blow can be crippling or deadly. Odds are some of these characters will be missing a limb or dead before somebody is advanced enough to have a six point healing spell (needed to attach limbs and bring you back from the brink of death from a stoved-in head or skewered torso).

But the busy work of strike rank – is it worth the trouble? Well, although I am a 50% combat/50% roleplay kind of guy, the group on a whole might actually be more like 75% combat/25%roleplay. With 50% I feel like I can relax, have a beer, and paint a world around the characters shenanigans. When the combat encroaches on that, I start feeling like it’s work. Don’t get me wrong, I love the action, irony, and heartbreak of RPG combat. I just don’t want it to be what it is all about. I put heart and passion into my GMing in part because I think that is a bit of a lost art these days. People are either too much on the serious side, or too much on the “beer and pretzels – games are a party” side. I just want to be in that sweet, sweet spot in the middle. But not sure there is room for both me and SR.

Next session things are going to heat up, and combat situations are going to get a bit more complicated. But we have had some good practice over two sessions now. Two combats among characters in the battle circles, and last game a nice fight against some weapon snakes (snakes with swords and maces for tails – chaos creatures), and also a couple of Broo. So for next game, we’ll continue to use strike rank as is (but without movement and encumbrance considerations). But I’m still looking at toning down the crunch factor a bit so I can relax more.

Statement of Intent is Buzzkill

I hate Statement of Intent. It’s in the 2nd edition Runequest rules, and seeing it in a game I wanted to run was just depressing.

I guess I must have encountered it back in the day, but for sure did not carry it forward. From the late 80’s onward moving and attacking seemed to work out OK for my D&D (and Call of Cthulhu as well, Champions has its own excellent rules for when you move and attack) with me doing it all in Dex order. My players never complained. Ahh, the good old days.

My first modern experience with SOI was when Big Ben was trying it for his Evils D&D game. I don’t think it worked out so good. For one thing, it’s a time waster; yet another thing that makes you have to go around the table, person to person, and have them tell you what they are going to do that round. Then you have to go around again for everybody to actually move, attack, etc. But why it sucked in this particular case was that at least half the players forgot right away it was about saying your intent, and they would grab their miniature and move it. I did this too at least once. It just added to the time it took for task resolution, and caused confusion. Yeah, that’s all a game needs, more of that shit.

Getting rid of it in Runequest combat was the first thinh I wanted to do. It’s a friggin’ buzzkill to me. I don’t want to spend more time on combat. In RQ it takes long enough as it is. Luckily, the combat in the first session was restricted to fairly tight Humakt combat circles, so it did not matter very much. But for next game I gotta get it figured out.

I’m thinking individual initiative rolls might be in order for this. That way, each combat can be different, characters who went last could maybe go first next time, and there will be less bitching from the guy who goes first; in this case Andy, who when he has a fast character always wants to wait and see what everybody else is doing, requiring allowing him to change the order he goes in. With initiative rolled for each combat encounter, this can be eliminated. You just go when you are set to go. If you get the chance to act early in the combat, you gotta STFU and take it and hope next time you’ll get to be last and see what the hell everybody else is up to.

When we started the Knights of the Old Republic game, I chaffed at the thought of using it’s initiative rules. But you know what? I got to like them. It was clean, fairly easy, and it changed often. I might make me ditch Dex order entirely in my AD&D games. Anything that gets me the hell away from Statement of Intent. Faaaar away.