![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Trail of Cthulhu
Dec. 2nd, 2010 08:53 amWent down to Gamer's Inn last night along with the roommate to see about a possible start-up for a Wednesday game. Dan, the potential GM, is someone I've gamed with a few times in the past. Unfortunately the expected third player had miscommunicated when he'd be available so we were short. Luckily, Dan was able to rope a couple of other people in the store to sit in for a session. The game, Trail of Cthulhu, is licensed by Chaosium to noted game designer Robin Laws for his Gumshoe system. Which is a mystery solving centric rpg. Our pre-gen characters were drawn from various parts of 30s England to investigate strange and alien birds spotted in various places. My nurse character and the roommate's closeted Anglican priest were both trying to help an older, mentally ill priest who claimed horrible alien birds were stalking him. The other two players were running a boredom driven female biology student who had found one of the bird corpses and a physics professor who wanted to know why gatherings of the birds interfered with his radiation experiments and his colleagues astronomy work...
The system is interesting and somewhat different. You basically use a point of value from a relevant skill to try and investigate something. For example, if my nurse wanted to check on the symptoms of the old priest and if they matched dementia she's spend a point of her Medicine skill. Or if its a skill test with some random risk, you roll a d6 after declaring how many skill points you'll spend. Like when Brendan had to make a drive roll to avoid some sheep in the road, he spent 2 points and then rolled against an unknown target of 2-8. Not surprisingly, given his lousy dice luck he plowed into that sheep in his car...
I'd be interested in continuing to game with Dan for the system, but really only if he can find at least a 3rd player for the group. Since the game style seems to need a minimum of three. Otherwise I don't really want to make the 30 to 40 minute drive to Gamer's Inn on the hope we can drag in a couple other players from the wandering masses...
The system is interesting and somewhat different. You basically use a point of value from a relevant skill to try and investigate something. For example, if my nurse wanted to check on the symptoms of the old priest and if they matched dementia she's spend a point of her Medicine skill. Or if its a skill test with some random risk, you roll a d6 after declaring how many skill points you'll spend. Like when Brendan had to make a drive roll to avoid some sheep in the road, he spent 2 points and then rolled against an unknown target of 2-8. Not surprisingly, given his lousy dice luck he plowed into that sheep in his car...
I'd be interested in continuing to game with Dan for the system, but really only if he can find at least a 3rd player for the group. Since the game style seems to need a minimum of three. Otherwise I don't really want to make the 30 to 40 minute drive to Gamer's Inn on the hope we can drag in a couple other players from the wandering masses...
