Post by TheUdjat on Dec 4, 2007 13:11:53 GMT -5
So titled because I veer just a bit from previous information posted by KMan and Yakumo.
BRP is a fairly loose system, and the one we will be using for Masks of Nyarlathotep. It has basic rules, but it leaves a lot of room for individual Keepers (DMs) to adjust things as a situation changes. BRP doesn’t try to predict every situation that will arise, it merely offers the tools to adapt to any situation that arises. So bear in mind, first and foremost, that I may be inventing rules, adjustments, and modifiers as I go along. Sometimes the situation just demands it.
Let’s start with the basic mechanics before we delve into character creation. If you already know how BRP works, feel free to skip/skim over this section and get right to the character creation rules (they’re waaaay down there). I will try to bold anything that’s a change from the basic way the system works.
Basics:
BRP (‘Basic Role Playing’) is a percentile system – that means most of your rolls will be done using percentiles (d100) rather than the ever-familiar d20. Pretty much everything, short of damage, is done through d100 rolls. Below I will summarize the three basic kinds of rolls.
Skills: All skills have a % score, which gauges both your chance of success and your character’s familiarity with that subject. When you begin play, you will have a considerable number of points to add to skills, but all skills will have some kind of % chance of success (except Cthulhu Mythos – more on that later). Obviously, the higher your skill %, the better chance you have to succeed at that skill, but that’s not all it means. A high percentage is a sign of considerable training and experience, and at times may mean you can skip routine or basic functions of a skill. For example, if you have a reasonable % in Pilot: Plane (say 40% or higher), it would fair to say your character is a decent pilot, and can fly without a check under normal conditions. Similarly, with a good % for Library Use, you will be able to find any non-obscure piece of information, given proper resources. There’s no point in requiring a check in many of these circumstances – those are mostly for extraordinary circumstances and obscure uses of your skills.
Modifiers: Some tasks are harder than others. A routine use of a skill might grant a bonus to the % chance, such that even someone untrained has a decent chance of success (and somebody trained may have no chance of failure at all). On the other hand, even an expert can be faced with an impressive challenge. Having the proper materials would boost a navigation or astronomy roll, for instance, while cloudy skies and poor conditions would lend considerable penalties. In short, no matter your skill %, some things will just be difficult, if not impossible (a person untrained in medicine has no chance of successfully performing emergency brain surgery – even a trained surgeon may have difficulty).
There is no specific guideline for these modifiers. It might be +10%, or it might be ‘skill halved’. Each different circumstance is interpreted differently. This makes for a very fluid, quick system, though clearly less structured and predictable.
Ability Checks: These aren’t used as frequently in Call of Cthulhu as you might think. Most checks are either skill rolls for resistance rolls (see below). Occasionally, though, a straight ability check is called for where someone isn’t opposing the strength of something/someone else and isn’t applying their training to the task. These rolls take the characteristic in question (Str, Dex, Con, App, Int, Pow, Edu – typically not Siz) and multiply it by 5. For example, a character trying not to fall down a set of crumbling stairs might roll Dex x5 to see if they can scramble away in time. Con x5 might be used to see if a character can avoid choking in a room full of smoke. App x5 could gauge if a character can impress a room full of people. Things like that.
Int, Pow, and Edu operate under a special function of the above. Characters are given actual derived stats based on these skills. Int x5 is called ‘Idea’, Edu x5 is called ‘Knowledge’, and Pow x5 is called ‘Luck’. In short, they are basic rolls that a Keeper (DM) can call for in any given situation: a character’s chance to have a flash of sudden intuition (Idea), a character remembering to bring some tool of importance with them (Luck), or a character’s chance to have basic knowledge of some subject (Knowledge). They don’t increase like skills (more on that later), but even average characters have a good chance to succeed (a character with ‘average luck’ literally has a 50/50 shot at making a Luck roll).
There is one other ‘derived’ stat: Sanity. But we’ll go into that later.
Critical Success/Failure: The above rolls all carry the potential for critical success and failure. On the roll of 01-05%, a character greatly succeeds at their task, or scores double damage in the case of combat rolls (assuming they have at least that much chance of success to begin with. A character with a 3% in a skill does not succeed on a 4%). A roll of 96-100% is a critical fumble – the skill doesn’t just fail, it makes things rose; a combat roll leads to some kind of mishap appropriate for the situation (anything from a weapon jam to hitting one’s ally). A character cannot have greater than 95% in a skill, but if they reach that point, only a 100% results in a critical fumble (96-99 remain an automatic failure, however). This is to prevent a ‘success or horrible failure only’ kind of situation.
Resistance Checks: Characters have stats. NPCs have stats. Often, objects have stats. Every now and then, these stats bump heads, and you need to determine who can arm wrestle who.
There is a resistance table to facilitate these comparisons. The two opposing parties are classified as ‘active’ or ‘passive’ – the active party rolls a d100 while comparing their own stat to the passive stat. Two equal stats result in a 50/50 chance of success, but for every point of difference, the chance to succeed shifts by 5%. For example, a character with 12 Str trying to break down a door with 15 Str would have a 35% chance of kicking it open. A character with 18 Con trying to resist a poison rated 12 would have an 80% chance of shrugging it off. And so on. Clearly, after a 10 point difference, it becomes automatic: a Cthonian with 45 Str will have no problem busting down that wall with 30 Str, but even the strongest of characters (Str 18) will never be able to kick in the same wall.
There’s a pretty little table which I’ll link to if I can find it, but it’s not too difficult to figure out.
Sanity:
Sanity is a pretty critical function of Cthulhu, as most of you probably already know. Since this game is often about the descent into madness and confronting things Man Was Not Meant To Know, it comes into play fairly frequently. In short, it is a numerical representation of one’s mental stability and grasp of reality – you know, how sane you are. It is a ‘derived’ statistic, in that it is your Pow x5, but it doesn’t work like the statistics mentioned above. Sanity has a unique function.
Whenever an investigator encounters something disturbing, shocking, or mind-warping, it involves a Sanity check. This does not have to be something supernatural (though it usually is): suddenly stumbling upon a horribly mutilated corpse, or having one’s life jeopardized by a serial killer, or any number of things might result in a Sanity check. But encountering a creature from the mythos, let alone a Great Old One, almost always results in a sanity check. Things that breach the laws of reality and make one question their own, well, sanity warrant a check.
A sanity check represents your investigator mentally wrestling with whatever it is they’ve encountered. A failed check typically means the investigator comprehends the full depth and horror of what they’ve just witnessed, while a passed check means they’ve managed to rationalize it or subdue the maddening implications of what they’ve witnessed (at least for a while). A character loses an appropriate amount of sanity (often nothing if they pass, though even a success might result in a small sanity decrease), consequently making their next sanity check even more difficult to pass.
For example, Suzie suddenly comes face-to-face with a pack of corpse-devouring ghouls in the middle of some black rite. She makes a sanity check (with a score of 50%) and rolls 67% - a whopping failure. She loses 1d6 sanity for the sight, rolling a 4. Her Sanity drops to 46%, making her next brush with the unknown bound to be a little more trying.
(Note: Books can also deteriorate one’s sanity. This may seem unusual – how can reading something cause mental anguish? – but understand that books with knowledge of the mythos are frightening and ghastly when their full weight is realized. An inexperienced investigator flipping through the Pnakotic Manuscripts may not immediately recognize the horrible knowledge for what it is, but the first time they encounter something mentioned in its pages, they will realize the soul-shattering truth in its bindings. Experienced investigators are rarely granted this reprieve.)
The effect is clear: over time, an investigator will slowly begin to slide towards madness. The further they go, the faster they go, until they are a babbling, incoherent mess fit for a sanitarium. When a character reaches 0 Sanity, they are no longer playable – they become my character. (If it fits the situation, I may allow a player to keep playing an insane character, if they seem to be doing a good enough job of being crazy. This never lasts very long, though.)
But beyond absolute madness, there are other penalties associated with losing Sanity: Temporary Insanity and Long-term Dementia (as I will call it). Temporary Insanity occurs when an investigator loses 5 sanity in a single roll. They go temporarily mad, usually for only a number of rounds, with varying possible reactions to their situation (catatonia, babbling incoherently, running in panic, screaming, etc.), but usually rendering them useless for the duration.
Long-term dementia is a little more trouble. Long-term problems arise when an investigator loses 1/5 of their max sanity score in a single hour (of game-time); in other words, their Pow in sanity points. Such a devastating shock to an investigator’s sanity result in a long-term mental problem, such as an intense phobia or other mental condition. These usually depend on the event that triggered the dementia – being in a subway station when Shudde M’ell slithers down a tunnel would understandably result in an intense fear of underground places and tunnels. Etc.
But it’s not all bleak. Though it is far, far easier to lose sanity, it can, on occasion, be recovered. Psychotherapy can result in slow increases over time (assuming the individual doesn’t have further shocks to their sanity), usually about 1d3 points a month. But more frequently, overcoming a significant challenge in the mythos (defeating the aims of a cult, slaying a foul monster, and other such rare events) can result in drastic increases to one’s sanity (though usually not enough to offset the madness incurred). An investigator triumphing, overcoming adversity is the single best way to re-establish one’s grip on reality. But it doesn’t happen a whole lot.
Sanity can never rise beyond 5x a character’s Pow. Furthermore, increases in the skill ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ also lowers the ‘glass ceiling’ of Sanity. Even if a character has 18 Pow (and consequently 90 max Sanity), a Cthulhu Mythos score of 35% will limit their max sanity to 65. Knowledge of the Mythos is useful, but man was never meant to learn of it.
There is one other notable addendum to sanity gains/losses: Magic. Magic in Call of Cthulhu isn’t the happy shiny magic of D&D, where you can let loose fireballs with impunity; magic in Cthulhu is terrifying, reality-warping, and an utter abomination of all things right and ordered in the universe. It can be a powerful tool, but it is also often as devastating to the user as the victim. Using magic almost always results in a sanity loss – there is no roll necessary. The deliberate, intentional warping of reality’s laws drain’s a caster’s sanity, regardless. This is often in addition to the cost of witnessing whatever spell they cast, be it the summoning of some terrible entity or the shriveling of an enemy’s flesh.
Combat
Combat in Call of Cthulhu is as loose and fluid as the rest of the system. It utilizes percentile rolls, titled appropriately: handgun, rifle, shotgun, fist, headbutt, kick, etc. These are bough in the same manner as other skills (see Character Creation below). They also receive modifiers for different circumstances – a gun at point blank is far more likely to hit than a rifle at 100 paces.
But in general, combat is not incredibly complex. BRP is a more skill-based system than combat-based. Investigators will likely fight crazed cultists and armed guards, but confrontations with supernatural entities rarely end well for those involved. As such, it is fairly open-ended. You can do anything you can plausibly think of, and your chance of accomplishing it will be adjusted according to the keeper’s judgment. But usually, you get an action equivalent to an attack, and an action equivalent to a move in a round. But as a round itself isn’t a set span of time (it could be a couple seconds or up to ten, or whatever seems appropriate), there aren’t rigid rules.
There also are no initiative rolls. The party with the highest dexterity goes first. If two individuals have the same dexterity, the character with the highest intelligence goes first between them. Still the same? Then they roll-off, lowest going first. Characters with firearms will often attack more in a round than one equipped with a melee weapon – it’s far faster to pull a trigger than swing a club. All firearms have a rating indicating how many time they can fire in a round (typically 1-3). If a character has a weapon out at the ready when combat begins, they can fire once before all other actions (in Dex order, of course). They get a second shot at their normal initiative (alongside all other actions) and, if they have the proper rating, a third shot at ½ Dex.
So there’s something to be said for firearms. Beyond that, usually everyone acts once on their initiative, and that’s it.
Weapons deal damage appropriate to the listed value. Melee weapons deal their listed amount, and add/subtract the damage modifier, if any (weak characters will do less damage, character that are large and strong often do a lot more). A character’s hit point total never increases, so what you start with is what you get. Damage doesn’t heal very fast, either. The First Aid skill can be used to repair some minor damage immediately after it’s take (1d3), but otherwise rest and longterm care must be utilized. For every week that passes, a character recovers 1d3 HP. If they are resting and receiving medical care, that increases to 2d3. There may still be scars or longstanding injuries from an attack months after it has happened, but these will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
BRP is a fairly loose system, and the one we will be using for Masks of Nyarlathotep. It has basic rules, but it leaves a lot of room for individual Keepers (DMs) to adjust things as a situation changes. BRP doesn’t try to predict every situation that will arise, it merely offers the tools to adapt to any situation that arises. So bear in mind, first and foremost, that I may be inventing rules, adjustments, and modifiers as I go along. Sometimes the situation just demands it.
Let’s start with the basic mechanics before we delve into character creation. If you already know how BRP works, feel free to skip/skim over this section and get right to the character creation rules (they’re waaaay down there). I will try to bold anything that’s a change from the basic way the system works.
Basics:
BRP (‘Basic Role Playing’) is a percentile system – that means most of your rolls will be done using percentiles (d100) rather than the ever-familiar d20. Pretty much everything, short of damage, is done through d100 rolls. Below I will summarize the three basic kinds of rolls.
Skills: All skills have a % score, which gauges both your chance of success and your character’s familiarity with that subject. When you begin play, you will have a considerable number of points to add to skills, but all skills will have some kind of % chance of success (except Cthulhu Mythos – more on that later). Obviously, the higher your skill %, the better chance you have to succeed at that skill, but that’s not all it means. A high percentage is a sign of considerable training and experience, and at times may mean you can skip routine or basic functions of a skill. For example, if you have a reasonable % in Pilot: Plane (say 40% or higher), it would fair to say your character is a decent pilot, and can fly without a check under normal conditions. Similarly, with a good % for Library Use, you will be able to find any non-obscure piece of information, given proper resources. There’s no point in requiring a check in many of these circumstances – those are mostly for extraordinary circumstances and obscure uses of your skills.
Modifiers: Some tasks are harder than others. A routine use of a skill might grant a bonus to the % chance, such that even someone untrained has a decent chance of success (and somebody trained may have no chance of failure at all). On the other hand, even an expert can be faced with an impressive challenge. Having the proper materials would boost a navigation or astronomy roll, for instance, while cloudy skies and poor conditions would lend considerable penalties. In short, no matter your skill %, some things will just be difficult, if not impossible (a person untrained in medicine has no chance of successfully performing emergency brain surgery – even a trained surgeon may have difficulty).
There is no specific guideline for these modifiers. It might be +10%, or it might be ‘skill halved’. Each different circumstance is interpreted differently. This makes for a very fluid, quick system, though clearly less structured and predictable.
Ability Checks: These aren’t used as frequently in Call of Cthulhu as you might think. Most checks are either skill rolls for resistance rolls (see below). Occasionally, though, a straight ability check is called for where someone isn’t opposing the strength of something/someone else and isn’t applying their training to the task. These rolls take the characteristic in question (Str, Dex, Con, App, Int, Pow, Edu – typically not Siz) and multiply it by 5. For example, a character trying not to fall down a set of crumbling stairs might roll Dex x5 to see if they can scramble away in time. Con x5 might be used to see if a character can avoid choking in a room full of smoke. App x5 could gauge if a character can impress a room full of people. Things like that.
Int, Pow, and Edu operate under a special function of the above. Characters are given actual derived stats based on these skills. Int x5 is called ‘Idea’, Edu x5 is called ‘Knowledge’, and Pow x5 is called ‘Luck’. In short, they are basic rolls that a Keeper (DM) can call for in any given situation: a character’s chance to have a flash of sudden intuition (Idea), a character remembering to bring some tool of importance with them (Luck), or a character’s chance to have basic knowledge of some subject (Knowledge). They don’t increase like skills (more on that later), but even average characters have a good chance to succeed (a character with ‘average luck’ literally has a 50/50 shot at making a Luck roll).
There is one other ‘derived’ stat: Sanity. But we’ll go into that later.
Critical Success/Failure: The above rolls all carry the potential for critical success and failure. On the roll of 01-05%, a character greatly succeeds at their task, or scores double damage in the case of combat rolls (assuming they have at least that much chance of success to begin with. A character with a 3% in a skill does not succeed on a 4%). A roll of 96-100% is a critical fumble – the skill doesn’t just fail, it makes things rose; a combat roll leads to some kind of mishap appropriate for the situation (anything from a weapon jam to hitting one’s ally). A character cannot have greater than 95% in a skill, but if they reach that point, only a 100% results in a critical fumble (96-99 remain an automatic failure, however). This is to prevent a ‘success or horrible failure only’ kind of situation.
Resistance Checks: Characters have stats. NPCs have stats. Often, objects have stats. Every now and then, these stats bump heads, and you need to determine who can arm wrestle who.
There is a resistance table to facilitate these comparisons. The two opposing parties are classified as ‘active’ or ‘passive’ – the active party rolls a d100 while comparing their own stat to the passive stat. Two equal stats result in a 50/50 chance of success, but for every point of difference, the chance to succeed shifts by 5%. For example, a character with 12 Str trying to break down a door with 15 Str would have a 35% chance of kicking it open. A character with 18 Con trying to resist a poison rated 12 would have an 80% chance of shrugging it off. And so on. Clearly, after a 10 point difference, it becomes automatic: a Cthonian with 45 Str will have no problem busting down that wall with 30 Str, but even the strongest of characters (Str 18) will never be able to kick in the same wall.
There’s a pretty little table which I’ll link to if I can find it, but it’s not too difficult to figure out.
Sanity:
Sanity is a pretty critical function of Cthulhu, as most of you probably already know. Since this game is often about the descent into madness and confronting things Man Was Not Meant To Know, it comes into play fairly frequently. In short, it is a numerical representation of one’s mental stability and grasp of reality – you know, how sane you are. It is a ‘derived’ statistic, in that it is your Pow x5, but it doesn’t work like the statistics mentioned above. Sanity has a unique function.
Whenever an investigator encounters something disturbing, shocking, or mind-warping, it involves a Sanity check. This does not have to be something supernatural (though it usually is): suddenly stumbling upon a horribly mutilated corpse, or having one’s life jeopardized by a serial killer, or any number of things might result in a Sanity check. But encountering a creature from the mythos, let alone a Great Old One, almost always results in a sanity check. Things that breach the laws of reality and make one question their own, well, sanity warrant a check.
A sanity check represents your investigator mentally wrestling with whatever it is they’ve encountered. A failed check typically means the investigator comprehends the full depth and horror of what they’ve just witnessed, while a passed check means they’ve managed to rationalize it or subdue the maddening implications of what they’ve witnessed (at least for a while). A character loses an appropriate amount of sanity (often nothing if they pass, though even a success might result in a small sanity decrease), consequently making their next sanity check even more difficult to pass.
For example, Suzie suddenly comes face-to-face with a pack of corpse-devouring ghouls in the middle of some black rite. She makes a sanity check (with a score of 50%) and rolls 67% - a whopping failure. She loses 1d6 sanity for the sight, rolling a 4. Her Sanity drops to 46%, making her next brush with the unknown bound to be a little more trying.
(Note: Books can also deteriorate one’s sanity. This may seem unusual – how can reading something cause mental anguish? – but understand that books with knowledge of the mythos are frightening and ghastly when their full weight is realized. An inexperienced investigator flipping through the Pnakotic Manuscripts may not immediately recognize the horrible knowledge for what it is, but the first time they encounter something mentioned in its pages, they will realize the soul-shattering truth in its bindings. Experienced investigators are rarely granted this reprieve.)
The effect is clear: over time, an investigator will slowly begin to slide towards madness. The further they go, the faster they go, until they are a babbling, incoherent mess fit for a sanitarium. When a character reaches 0 Sanity, they are no longer playable – they become my character. (If it fits the situation, I may allow a player to keep playing an insane character, if they seem to be doing a good enough job of being crazy. This never lasts very long, though.)
But beyond absolute madness, there are other penalties associated with losing Sanity: Temporary Insanity and Long-term Dementia (as I will call it). Temporary Insanity occurs when an investigator loses 5 sanity in a single roll. They go temporarily mad, usually for only a number of rounds, with varying possible reactions to their situation (catatonia, babbling incoherently, running in panic, screaming, etc.), but usually rendering them useless for the duration.
Long-term dementia is a little more trouble. Long-term problems arise when an investigator loses 1/5 of their max sanity score in a single hour (of game-time); in other words, their Pow in sanity points. Such a devastating shock to an investigator’s sanity result in a long-term mental problem, such as an intense phobia or other mental condition. These usually depend on the event that triggered the dementia – being in a subway station when Shudde M’ell slithers down a tunnel would understandably result in an intense fear of underground places and tunnels. Etc.
But it’s not all bleak. Though it is far, far easier to lose sanity, it can, on occasion, be recovered. Psychotherapy can result in slow increases over time (assuming the individual doesn’t have further shocks to their sanity), usually about 1d3 points a month. But more frequently, overcoming a significant challenge in the mythos (defeating the aims of a cult, slaying a foul monster, and other such rare events) can result in drastic increases to one’s sanity (though usually not enough to offset the madness incurred). An investigator triumphing, overcoming adversity is the single best way to re-establish one’s grip on reality. But it doesn’t happen a whole lot.
Sanity can never rise beyond 5x a character’s Pow. Furthermore, increases in the skill ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ also lowers the ‘glass ceiling’ of Sanity. Even if a character has 18 Pow (and consequently 90 max Sanity), a Cthulhu Mythos score of 35% will limit their max sanity to 65. Knowledge of the Mythos is useful, but man was never meant to learn of it.
There is one other notable addendum to sanity gains/losses: Magic. Magic in Call of Cthulhu isn’t the happy shiny magic of D&D, where you can let loose fireballs with impunity; magic in Cthulhu is terrifying, reality-warping, and an utter abomination of all things right and ordered in the universe. It can be a powerful tool, but it is also often as devastating to the user as the victim. Using magic almost always results in a sanity loss – there is no roll necessary. The deliberate, intentional warping of reality’s laws drain’s a caster’s sanity, regardless. This is often in addition to the cost of witnessing whatever spell they cast, be it the summoning of some terrible entity or the shriveling of an enemy’s flesh.
Combat
Combat in Call of Cthulhu is as loose and fluid as the rest of the system. It utilizes percentile rolls, titled appropriately: handgun, rifle, shotgun, fist, headbutt, kick, etc. These are bough in the same manner as other skills (see Character Creation below). They also receive modifiers for different circumstances – a gun at point blank is far more likely to hit than a rifle at 100 paces.
But in general, combat is not incredibly complex. BRP is a more skill-based system than combat-based. Investigators will likely fight crazed cultists and armed guards, but confrontations with supernatural entities rarely end well for those involved. As such, it is fairly open-ended. You can do anything you can plausibly think of, and your chance of accomplishing it will be adjusted according to the keeper’s judgment. But usually, you get an action equivalent to an attack, and an action equivalent to a move in a round. But as a round itself isn’t a set span of time (it could be a couple seconds or up to ten, or whatever seems appropriate), there aren’t rigid rules.
There also are no initiative rolls. The party with the highest dexterity goes first. If two individuals have the same dexterity, the character with the highest intelligence goes first between them. Still the same? Then they roll-off, lowest going first. Characters with firearms will often attack more in a round than one equipped with a melee weapon – it’s far faster to pull a trigger than swing a club. All firearms have a rating indicating how many time they can fire in a round (typically 1-3). If a character has a weapon out at the ready when combat begins, they can fire once before all other actions (in Dex order, of course). They get a second shot at their normal initiative (alongside all other actions) and, if they have the proper rating, a third shot at ½ Dex.
So there’s something to be said for firearms. Beyond that, usually everyone acts once on their initiative, and that’s it.
Weapons deal damage appropriate to the listed value. Melee weapons deal their listed amount, and add/subtract the damage modifier, if any (weak characters will do less damage, character that are large and strong often do a lot more). A character’s hit point total never increases, so what you start with is what you get. Damage doesn’t heal very fast, either. The First Aid skill can be used to repair some minor damage immediately after it’s take (1d3), but otherwise rest and longterm care must be utilized. For every week that passes, a character recovers 1d3 HP. If they are resting and receiving medical care, that increases to 2d3. There may still be scars or longstanding injuries from an attack months after it has happened, but these will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
