Time to look back at the games played in April whilst folks act out May Day celebrations and wouldbe Keepers take notes on how these rituals are one Sanity check away from driving someone over the edge!!
Love You to Death – 7th Edition Cthulhu, 1920s
Another one-to-one session with Keeper Sweet in the quintessential setting for Call of Cthulhu but with added Noir! Usually, you know you’re going to investigate a mythos related case as the person of interest has fallen in with the wrong crowd or you have to pretend to ignore the mythos even though there is a great big mythos monster on the front cover. This was a little bit of both as there was no expectation you would meet the mythos and you were sufficiently distracted by the great style of the game. Trouble is, there is real investigation that needs to be done and that’s not my strong point but there was enough NPCs to help me along!
The set-up for the game is great, you are a down on your luck Private Detective whose phone has been disconnected, your secretary has left and you just got a letter from a love that never was. And that’s where the Noir element comes in. A flawed character with an emotional baggage. Add to that an old flame walks through the door and asks you to collect a dog from police station – what could go wrong!
Keeper Sweet had prepped a number of characters for the game and they were all variations of the detective skills set with varying attributes. I chose Jacob “Jack” Collin, a hard hitter, fair luck and sanity but woefully lacking in Size and Constitution so he wasn’t the kinda guy to run headlong into danger!
So what was the game like? Really fun to play. When it’s just the two of you, you can load up a few hours of Jazz Noir from YouTube and enjoy some good roleplaying between your character and the NPCs. There was a contact in the police to talk to, a streetwise fence and an extra one we came up with was a Cabbie. We figured it’s late at night, not many cars around this side of town so why not have the same driver pick you up and get to know you, for an extra couple of bucks they’ll drive you to the showdown!
What did I enjoy the most? Cthulhu Noir? What’s there not to like! The setting, the characters the environment and that the mythos take a gentle back seat to the story. Sure, there is the horror of the mythos to be had but it’s the background and story between the characters that really makes the adventure! What would I have wanted more of in the adventure? I fed back to Sweet that more combat might have broken up the investigative pace as the story involved Gangster so I would have expected a little more confrontation but all in all a great adventure. Does Love Forgive by Chaosium contains Love you to death and Mask of Desire (Affiliate Link to Drivethrurpg)
Poker Night – Delta Green, 2015
In April, Keeper Stef gave us Delta Green – the X-Files meets the Mythos in this offshoot of Call of Cthulhu that gets a reprint every so often and has developed a good following. Poker Night is a free game designed as a recruitment scenario for a party to come together and be recruited by the shadowy Delta Green for further missions! The set-up is the aforementioned Poker night which takes place on an airbase and the characters are in the air force looking forward to winning some cash. This was a really interesting intro as we didn’t know from where the mythos were going to appear!
I’d been really lucky in my dice rolls and turned out a great Special Forces character for the game called Wilks who’d served in every conflict for 20 years and so was on the airbase winding down his career. What the character didn’t excel at was sanity! The Delta Green mechanic for sanity is interesting as you can deflect sanity ‘damage’ onto your character’s coping mechanism reducing the impact – my Special Forces character only used this once when he was about to blow another member of the team away!
What did I enjoy the most? My character! I had the dice rolls to bring a bad ass to the table for a game and having that confidence in your character is great. What would I have wanted more of in the adventure? Similar to Love you to Death, lots of investigation can do with being broken up by a shoot-out especially when my character Wilks is very good at it! I have to say the way we ended Poker night was different compared to other scenarios. There wasn’t a combat solution climax which I’m beginning to appreciate as the more I play, the more I see ‘solve the clues then battle the monster’ adventures. This isn’t bad by any means but it has to be done well for it to be the right mix. Poker night on Drivethrurpg
Games for May include more Delta Green and a Cthulhu Scenario written by Seth Skorkowsky