[2097]

Originally Posted by Pelgrane Press

You mention racism, but refer to a section which doesn't explicitly deal with racism. Looking up "race" in the index takes me to a sidebar which deals with this issue (page 169 if you are interested). It suggests a number of approaches for dealing with race in a game set in the 30s. Are any of these of use?

Thanks. I did read this and it influenced my game, but I interpret that section as being about racism in the 30s, not racism in lovecraftiana. It does mention that the Innsmouth-lookers were "white", but nothing about Nyarlathothep as the jet black man or the Innsmouth look as a heredital impurity.

I'm glad you do this [ignoring the pulp/pure icons] - it's exactly our intention. Pick the optional rules which best suit your game

As a follow-up to this, we had some initial confusion about when the pulp/pure icons were inclusionary or exclusionary. For example, the list of occupations has some marked pulp, some pure, and some not marked at all. Is a "pulp" game a game with all three, and a "pure" game a game with "pulp" ones excluded? Or, conversely, is a "pure" game a game with only the "pure" occupations? I decided to interpret that part as "especially suited for". The symbols are used in a way that I perceive as inconsistent.

The ruleset is supposed to slip into the background - I suggest that if you are finding it more time consuming than rolling percentile dice or d20s to determine succes or failure, then it's probably unfamiliarity or just a matter of taste.

It might be a bit less then percentiles or d20s, but more than Fudge. You're rolling and making decisions over how much to spend at the same time. Fun (especially "spending stability to save stability"), but very visible and not very background.

One concern might be balance.

A six-sided die to beat four is literally coinflip and will never be harder. It will be even easier until the players are depleted. The major difference between a champion and a dabbler is who get depleted the first (and who can afford to make the most daring spends).

Some difficulties are higher (I used a monster that is six to hit, which meant that players ran out of their Firearms points and then ran away), and some are even easier.

There's a line in the book about adding encounters to make sure that the players pools are reasonably low during any climactic action sequences. That seems difficult to pull off for the GM (again, the General Abilities aren't listed on the "Keeper's Investigators Matrix" so it's hard to judge whether or not to do it). As it turnes out, I had the opposite problem; one character was unconscious and two had no scuffling at all (there are rules in the book for untrained shootists, but not for other skills) so I did a cheesy thing and let the players trap some of the monsters in the basement more easily than I had planned. Three snuck out which I hoped the players could beat; they couldn't so a chase ensued. This part was pretty tense and good.

The system is supposed to abstract an investigative narrative where investigators will get all the vital clues, and then decide what to do with them.

That part of the book is clearly written and the intent come across well. In my playtest, however, the point spend system for investigative abilities only speeded up the scenario further to almost breakneck speed. Some players jumped to the wrong conclusions and used spends to check whether or not they were right instead of doing more research. I had planted an artifact for a character that I thought had received too little "stage time" to discover and use, but another player (who'd gotten plenty of "stage time" already) used a two-point archeology spend to be the hero yet again. (It would've been fine if he'd found it out eventually, but it was more like "Let me have it! I've got the world's best library and I shoot the best of all! Spend, spend, spend!")

Again, this is subtle stuff and I'd like to think that I manage to hide both of these problems from the players (unless they read these RPG.net-comments, of course), and I know that Laws has a "casual player" archetype that doesn't mind being in the background, but this is subtle stuff and the point spends became more of a hindrance than a help.

Some players can be relied upon to take up a lot of "stage" and limelight (I know I can, when I play) and others are more background characters -- I'm pretty good at picking this up quickly and I like to go out of my way to give them at least a few minutes of fame every session by making sure that they are in the right (or wrong!) place at the wrong time.

So instead of the "stage-hungry" players getting 99% and the "shyer" getting 1% (which is what the group dynamics usually dictate), I like to make it maybe 70/30 or so -- still in favor of the "stage-hungry" ones since they are dependable, imaginative players who does make my job easier as a GM but giving everyone a memory or two to take home with them.

The investigative point spends got in the way of that, almost pushing it back to 99/1.

I strongly recommend you take a look at Stunning Eldritch Tales before prejudging the rest of our line.

I should've singled out Stunning Eldritch Tales and Shadows Over Filmland instead of making a sweeping comment over the line. From the title and the cover, they look like joke books. I know Hite and Laws can be good and I guess the books deserves a second look, but for now they don't really appeal to me. When I first saw the cover to Shadows Over Filmland, I went "What? No!" with a disappointed voice. I really like Jérôme's art for the cover and internals of the main Trail of Cthulhu book. The problem is the typography and the sarcastic-sounding pulp titles. Take a look at a thirties cover of "Weird Tales". Silly, sure, but it comes across as straight-faced. If it doesn't take itself seriously, why should the readers?

There are some conversion notes for existing BRP adventures on our website.

I know, but it seems easy enough to do with the rules and notes in the book. I really loved how they had the guts to just say "Ignore STR, CON, SIZ, INT, POW, DEX, APP and EDU". That kind of brave minimalism is to my taste.

Thanks for your follow-up comments.