Oct 17, 2022
Jon finally fulfilled his
promise to run The Code for Seth!!! And we pulled in three patrons
to play with Seth, Andy, Chris, and Nelson. It was a fantastic
playthrough. The game was recorded, and it’s exclusively available
for patrons of the Modern Mythos podcast to enjoy. If you're
interested in checking it out, it's a five-hour playthrough
completely available in a single audio file, just join the Modern
Mythos Patreon at
https://www.patreon.com/modern_mythos. Jon is
already planning more patron-exclusive games. If you’re interested
in playing, please consider joining the Patreon
campaign.
Jon and Seth also discussed
pacing in an investigative game. Here are some of the points that
were covered:
- The hard part is getting your players to
understand the methods of Investigative adventures, versus just
kicking down the door and charging in, (a more common method of
investigation in a fantasy realm).
- Players probably understand how fragile their
characters are. Strictly D&D players are the hardest to teach
that lesson to, as D&D is pretty much superheroes who can heal
instantly.
- Don't buy that crap that a mystery HAS to be
slow. That's a goofy myth that a lot of Call of Cthulhu players buy
into. Sure, a mystery isn't going to go with the action and
excitement of combat (until there is combat) but it doesn't need to
be some drudgery moving at glacial pace.
- Some people think roleplaying conversations and
interviews needs to be played out. Cool in theory, but 95% of the
time is boring as hell in practice. So while you will be doing a
lot of social interactions, you can sort of speed through them to
get to the good parts. A 15 minute interview with an NPC shouldn't
take 15 minutes, if there's only 1 minute that gives the key
information to push the story forward. Only play out or summarize
the important portions.
- Think about Investigative shows like CSI or
Castle. Those are pretty fast-paced. People try to make it like
some BBC Agatha Christie re-telling of Miss Marple, taking their
time to the point the audience falls asleep. Don't do that. Channel
CSI or Magnum PI.”
- Call for Idea rolls if the game gets slow and
PC’s don’t know what to do.
- We suggest Hard and Extreme Library Use is
multiple clues, instead of a roll for every clue. Finding clues
shouldn’t be difficult, because what they do with the clues is the
exciting part.
- Raymond Chandler’s rule: When the investigation
slows to a crawl, "Enter a guy with a gun." It's guaranteed to get
the excitement going again.
We can’t do this show alone. We
want to thank our amazing editors Max Mahaffa and Edwin Nagy for
their hard work and keen skills at making us sound
awesome!
We also want to thank John
Sumrow, for our badass logo. He’s a very talented artist, so please
follow him on Facebook, check out his official website, and
please consider joining his Patreon account. Links in the show
notes.
https://www.facebook.com/johnsumrow
http://www.johnsumrow.com
https://www.patreon.com/JohnSumrow
And finally, we want to thank
The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets for generously allowing us to
use their song,
Gluttony,
as our intro and outro music. If you are a fan of Lovecraft’s
writing and the Call of Cthulhu RPG, then you need to check out The
Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. Please check out their BandCamp
site and their official band site. Links in the show
notes.
https://thedarkestofthehillsidethickets.bandcamp.com/
http://thickets.net/