Part 9- Corrupting the Rules

RULES VARIATIONS

Being extremely satisfied with the way the Call of Cthulhu system rules were written, I didn’t feel much need to make any sort of drastic changes to them. Still, I couldn’t get away without making a couple of modifications...

Stat Adjustment:

Because I feel that character conception is extremely important, I insist that before character generation sessions, all my players have a good idea of who and what they’re going to play. Backstory, profession, looks, etc. I much prefer this than to have a player roll up a character, and then having them being forced to build a character around the rolls. To me, it makes for much better roleplaying.

So when a player is generating his/her character, if their rolls didn’t quite match fit with what the character concept was, the player was allowed to swap stats around. For example, if Duane had a Professor character, and rolled a 15 STR and 9 INT, well, that doesn’t make sense to have a beefcake professor with a 90 IQ, does it? But switching the two around makes a lot more sense. There are some obvious exceptions to this; it’s not possible to swap your EDU and your CON, for example, since they’re based off different dice rolls.

Skill Point Allocation:

Continuing on with character conception, i've done away with the rules regarding differentiating Occupation skill points and Hobby skill points. While i can see the reasoning behind it, i just don't like the idea of telling a player that sorry, you can't put 5 more points in Spot Hidden- you have to save those for Underwater Basket Weaving (or whatever). If a player had a good idea of the skill set that they want for their character, why restrict them? And if a player comes up with a bad character concept ("i'm gonna pump all my points into combat skills!"), let them discover the error of their ways during the course of the adventure.

If you're worried about players struggling with giving their characters the right skills, sit down with them, and help them figure out their character idea: what's his job? What skills does he need to perform that job well? What might he do in his off time? The Investigator's Companion has some wonderful occupations, and their related skills, to use as starting points. For newer players, i'm more inclined to have them follow the character generation rules, but as people get more familiar with the game system, giving them more flexiblity enhances the enjoyment of creating characters.

Karma Points:

I openly and unashamedly ripped this off from Zero when he was running his GURPS stuff. In addition to Skill Checks that are awarded, at the end of each night’s session, Karma Points are given out. They are based on several criteria: Danger, Wisdom, Role Playing, and Learning Curve. One point is automatically given to everyone. A character can have a maximum of 14 Karma Points saved at any one given time, but not all characters will get the same number of points at the end of a session. It’s all based on the player’s performance that particular night, and what happened to the character. I.e., if the character was never in combat that night, then he/she wouldn’t be awarded with a Danger karma point.

So what do you do with Karma Points? They are used to help fudge dice rolls, especially for skill rolls. For example, let’s say that Masrick is attempting to jump out of the 5th story window in an attempt to escape a shoggoth. Masrick rolls his Jump skill (which is at a 54%), and rolls a 62% missing it by 8. Since Masrick’s player doesn’t want him to suffer the full effects of a 5 story jump, he decides to spend 8 Karma Points on his roll, reducing his roll to 54%, thus making a successful jump.

Thankfully, my players are good enough to realize that these points should only be used in the most dire of circumstances. If you use this system, you may have to adjust some things, such as how many you award at the end of a session, what the Max total is, etc. Also, I NEVER allow these points to be spent on Cthulhu Mythos or Sanity rolls.

Lawn Gnome Skill:

I can’t even remember how this one started...all I know is that, sometime early on in the campaign, a player had blown a roll (I think Library Use) particularly badly, and someone else made an off hand comment about “hey, but you did find out a ton of info on Lawn Gnomes”, or something like that.

Naturally, the joke stuck, and has now worked into our house rules.

Essentially, any time botches a skill roll Real Bad, like a 97% or above, that character will get a certain number of percentile points added to his/her Lawn Gnome skill. The worse the roll at the more critical a time, the more points awarded. Usually, these points are awarded during Library Use or Spot Hidden rolls, but not exclusively. Please note that this skill has absolutely no real value whatsoever, except to keep track of which investigator is the biggest bumbling idiot in the party.