Literally best ROLE PLAYING game coming through, prove me wrong

Literally best ROLE PLAYING game coming through, prove me wrong
>pro tip you can't

What do you mean by "ROLE PLAYING"?

>no THAC0.
>best ever.
Yeah, right...

you play a role, no game does this better than coc

>d100
Nah, it's shit at roleplaying senpai. Come back when you're 3d6 roll under.

d100 is LITERALLY the best system

What the fuck is all of that granularity used for, huh? What necessitates it? Nothing. Nobody cares about a 1% or 3% differences in chances. Most d100 systems work in 5% and 10%, so they may as well be using a d20. Not to mention that it has the same problem as the d20, that is being wildly swingly. Nah, fuck d100.

>blocks you're path

never played

>Skills are either heavily limited or OP
>Gun system is BROKE AS FUCK
>A sanity system that has no described insanity effects on player abilities or stats and is instead soley fluff and RP-reliant

I love CoC but fuck is the system close to Pathfinder in it's degree of un-optomized rollplaying.

>Lovecraftian game
>Doesn't have GUMSHOE-style investigation mechanics.

Nah.

Is this the game where you throw dynamite at everything?

Basically the GUMSHOE system (which Trail of Cthulhu uses) is, as the name suggests, built around investigation. For "core clues" (those which are necessary to move the plot forward), PCs with the relevant investigative ability will always find the clue, no roll required. In a standard investigative game (like Call of Cthulhu) if the players miss a vital clue either the game stops or the GM gives it to them anyway (by dropping it in another scene, having an NPC give it to them, saying "why don't you roll that again", etc.) GUMSHOE cuts out the middleman.

>BRP
>good

I think I have just the site for you. >>>r/rpg

hmm, might try to hybrid that mechanic somehow, I like the idea that players can fail at discovering some clue, I rather like the idea of making 3 to 4 clues in one scene, the PC's will have to find at least one in order to continue, that's my way of keeping the idea of failure in the players mind whilst also spurring on the need to find more supporting evidence
>mfw an investigator gets 2 bits of evidence

Well, only core clues are automatic successes, other clues which are useful but not necessary (like "the assassin used a weapon not common since the 19th century" or "the head cultist has a peanut allergy") require you to pay points out of your pool to find them.

You're very, VERY close to being right.

BRP is the best system, not CoC, but Mythras is the best iteration. It's the culmination of RuneQuest streamlined to handle anything, and combined with various supplements and spinoffs it will run anything.

What does BRP stand for?

I don't exactly see the point. You might also make a system where if your combat score is superior to your opponents combat score, you automatically win. If you lose, either the game stops or the GM lets you continue anyway.

Basic Role Playing game. It's the D100 system used in CoC, Delta Green, Runequest, Elric/Strombringer, and for Pendragon (converted to use a D20 instead of D100).

The point is that mystery games aren't fun if you flub a roll and miss a critical piece of evidence or a link in a chain, which kills the game.

Tried it.
Wasn't for me.
I prefer my RPGs to be more like narrative wargames, since that's where I'm coming from.
No not 4e.
4e doesn't use hexes, and is too focused on party synergy, not enough on personal actions.

Fiasco is like the antithesis of what I want in a game.

Yes, but if you don't have the required skill, then you'll miss the clue, too. Or am I wrong?

Dunno. I imagine that wouldn't be a factor, since these things are planned according to the PC's capabilities.

>You might also make a system where if your combat score is superior to your opponents combat score, you automatically win.
I believe this is how Amber Diceless, CORPS, and maybe EABA work (though the last two make you roll if the numbers are close enough).

Delta Green's new edition has a similar system. If you have a required skill, you automatically find some clues. The higher the score, the better the intel.

Planning things so the PCs never are tested outside their competencies is metagaming and a dangerous import from video games.

Create a verisimilitudinous world. Your players inhabit it. Reality does not make concessions.

Depends on the game.

If the adventure is really created around the skills of the characters, then you definitely don't need any game. It makes no sense to me, either.

You're not supposed to create a verisimilitudinous world in CoC, you're supposed to create a mystery story for the players to move through. It's a different expectation from sandbox campaigns ec.

The adventure is a mystery for the players to solve. If the players cannot solve the mystery then the game session has been a failure, thus every mystery needs to be handcrafted to be solvable by what the player characters could reasonably achieve.

Also, FWIW, GUMSHOE (rightly) says that finding the clues isn't the exciting part of a mystery game (thus auto-granting clues), it's the interpretation (which is where the game comes in). I didn't read much beyond that. There is a simple skill system resolved by 1d6+level against a difficulty for non-investigative tasks. It's OGL/CC, so you can go read it at their site.

This, too. It's up to the players to make their own conclusions out of the clues they've been given, and is a central part of the game session. It's like completing a puzzle, and you cannot do that with pieces missing.

Now I'm wondering how a Mechwarrior setting Fiasco playset would work?

"Ambition" is certainly there with noble warriors and mercenary bands wanting to secure territory and their contract bounties.

"Poor impulse control" means you're likely not trusted with a Mech or a good enough pilot to get yourself out of the strategic snafus by the skin of your hull.

So support crew shenanigans? At that point it isn't really about Mechwarrior specifically in terms of crunch converted to narrative.

Fuck even MAID would work better with the Stress mechanic as an analogue to the heat management of walking battle fortresses.

>mystery games aren't fun if you flub a roll and miss a critical piece of evidence or a link in a chain, which kills the game.
So you play RPGs without a GM or something?

>You're not supposed to create a verisimilitudinous world in CoC
No, you are. Lovecraft himself did that. You just create your world so that the mystery and the story can advance without the players necessarily uncovering every single fucking bit of information. In fact it's better if they don't. If your mystery is constructed in a way that solving it doesn't require players to be literally Sherlock Holmes, then the players can solve it.

[Plan for game, have clue in room]
"Roll to search the room"
*players fail roll*
"Alright, you don't find anything."
Game dies because they're missing a clue.

Get the picture?

CoC is all about creating a set piece for the players to solve, and is a ridiculously bad fit for D&D-like sandbox campaign where you roll for a random encounter in every hex tile.

>My character is going to die very easily or go insane to the point of being unplayable, all within the first session.

Oh boy sign me up. I've rolled up 10 characters in advance.

>you're supposed to create a mystery story for the players to move through

I see this arguement, and I'm like "whut?" The mystery is is the hook. The actual play is survival. Half of CoC mysteries don't get solved, they get blown up, accidentally unravelled or left to their own devices as investigators kick the bucket in one way or another.
The other half is not nearly as fun.

Maybe just don't do that then.

>Player fails roll.
>Game dies because they're missing a clue.
Instead of not finding the clue, he can find just a piece of it, or searching for it takes simply more time, or you can put the clue somewhere else.

>If the players cannot solve the mystery then the game session has been a failure,
You sound really bad at running mystery games. My players have failed to bring a culprit to justice before. Dude it's like they are saying, no point of failure no point of a game. If you just build the game around what they can do and barely roll for anything then why do you even need the game? I don't think your players would appreciate knowing they have pretty much no agency in your games.

That's really not true and one of the example modules for 7th edition in the handbook is a sandbox style investigation where the GM can do almost anything and change so much that even if the players have played it before it wouldn't help. The players have the run of an entire town and they can solve the mystery without even speaking to some NPCs.

Sounds like you aren't good at writing branching paths the mystery could take and as a result just railroad your players while saying to yourself "This is how it's supposed to be".

Cool features of the d100/Chaosium skill system - margins of success and advancement.

Difficulty is proportional. For example - if a difficult task is at 1/5 the base, or 1-1/2 the base, that'll scale as you improve.

When you earn improvement, you have to fail a skill check to improve your percentage. The better you get, the harder it is to improve.

But GURPS is still better

True

Players are given enough points that it's expected that at least one person will have every investigative skill.

>the PCs never are tested
In GUMSHOE there are plenty of times that players need to roll. Finding a core clue isn't one of them.

So you're saying that even if he fails the roll you're giving him the clue one way or another, because the session being enjoyable depends on it, and that ultimately there's no chance of failure? Really makes you think

>My players have failed to bring a culprit to justice before
That can still happen in GUMSHOE. Maybe he beats you in a car chase and escapes, or maybe the eldritch abomination he's summoned eats your brain. The thing is, both of those types of failure can still be enjoyable. Has there been a time where they failed to bring the guy to justice because halfway through a session the PCs couldn't find a clue that was integral to the plot, so they just packed up and left early? No, unless you run really boring games.

Cthulhu gets slightly larger, slightly closer, with every edition... by 13th edition he shall emerge...

You're an idiot.

>Has there been a time where they failed to bring the guy to justice because halfway through a session the PCs couldn't find a clue that was integral to the plot, so they just packed up and left early?
And that's never happened to me in TONS of CoC sessions because I'm not bad at running them. You didn't address the more important points in my post. Sounds like you run railroaded games and your players just don't realize it.

You don't make players roll for an important clue you dunkass (unless they're under time pressure). You ask them if they search the room, and X time later (you can penalize them with time if they fail rolls) they find it.
>get the picture?
Better than you apparently because I've ran games like this before and didn't get any problems related to this.

Of course you don't give them a total sandbox world. But you construct your world carefully as if it can be more or less navigated in total freedom anyway. This is only for immersion purposes.

>The actual play is survival.
>The other half is not nearly as fun.
If your mystery is good you can make the investigation fun as well. Everybody has fun when their characters start getting bits and pieces about horrors and terrible implications. The actual solving of the mystery is indeed not important, but you still have to give your players something.

Similar points to yours were made by other people and I responded to them, but fine:
>no point of failure no point of game
There is a chance of failure in most parts of the game, just not in gathering core clues (which is not all, or even most, clues).
>If you just build the game around what they can do and barely roll for anything then why do you even need the game?
Again, there are things you roll for, finding a clue that is necessary to the plot is not one of them. There are also plenty of games where rolling is even less common than in GUMSHOE.
>agency
This isn't really how agency is used when talking about ttrpgs. In GUMSHOE, players can still go where they want and do what they want, there is just ONE aspect of the game (finding some (but not all) clues) that is accepted as an automatic success. This really has nothing to do with railroading.

I enjoy Through the Breach myself.