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What we were expecting before play
We had all played Call of Cthulu before and most of us were more or less fans of that venerable system and setting. We knew that the Gumshoe rules, which underpin the ToC gameset, would focus on the investigative side of things rather than combat. This sounded good. We felt that this would be appropriate to the atmosphere of the Lovecraftian milieu. Hopefully there would be a breadcrumb trail of clues that the antiquarians, journos and flappers would pick up on with a sense of growing dread. We also knew something about the details of the system: that, for example, characters had a ‘drive’ which would push them into dangerous situations, and that players allocated points to their character’s different abilities and then spent these as the adventure progressed. I personally had another agenda that I wanted the game to address. I am a ‘design matters’ guy myself, and hoped to encounter a system which actually provided mechanical support for the necessary atmosphere of mounting horror.
Chargen
The chargen often impressed, though there were some surprises and anomalies. We all generated characters that we felt were interesting and appropriate to the setting. I had a Private Dick (much schoolboyish mirth). There was also an Episcopalian vicar and a feisty librarian dame; basically Dana Scully, we were told, ‘in a cloche hat’.
Points were assigned in two areas. First, we had to distribute -a quite small number- of them amongst our investigative skills. These included ‘Academic’ things like Archaeology and History; ‘Interpersonal’ skills like Flirting and Cop Talk (getting on with and being able to speak the lingo of cops); and ‘Technical’ abilities like Lockpicking and Outdoorsman. These were to be used for the purposes of getting clues from the scenes visited along the Trail. Then we divided up a much larger pool of skill points amongst our General Abilities. A little confusingly, we discovered that things like Riding, Firearms and Electrical Repair generally needed higher ratings than our Investigative Skills. Whereas it was sufficient to assign 3 or 4 points to say, Art, to qualify as an expert in that area, it was possible to take 5, 10 or 15 (or more) points in Drive. This results, we discovered, from the fact that different mechanics are used for ‘general' and investigative’ skills (see below). It all generally worked out in play, though I was perhaps a little disappointed by the subtle loss of system elegance this entailed.
We then described our characters in terms of their Drive. I chose ‘Arrogance’ for my private investigator, from amongst ten or so options such as Curiosity, Scholarship and Sense of Duty. My PI, I decided, was a hard-headed man who hated Arkham’s reputation for witchy hysteria and general spookiness. He would gladly step into situations where there was a suspicion of supernatural agency to expose the mundane reality beneath. I liked the principle behind the design here. Players were invited to think about a premise for their character and to consider their likely fate in the adventure or campaign. What route would they take into madness? Players in a Lovecraftian game should accept, even relish, the possibility of their character’s death or descent into insanity. Working out their likely route therefore seemed appropriate. My PI was bound in the long term to get himself into psychological and ideological trouble, since the premise behind his arrogant actions would eventually be undermined (there really wasn’t going to be a rational explanation behind the cases he sought to expose!). In support of our Drives, we were also invited to decide Pillars of Stability (what we believed in: e.g. for my guy ‘belief in a rational explanation’ , ‘love of Arkham’) and Sources of Stability (institutions and people who gave us psychological support :e.g. my PI had his little agency as a pillar, as well as his devoted secretary). Interesting for a campaign, in which these would be progressively undermined and removed from a character.
Playing The Adventure
The GM had got hold of an old CoC game and adapted it for play with the Trail rules. There was a bit of a struggle at the start (or at least I experienced a slight struggle) as to why our characters had joined forces in the first place. A vicar, a flapper and a private dick made an unlikely trio. Perhaps I experienced this more keenly because recent games I had played-Spirit of the Century and even Mongoose Traveller-included mechanics that bound parties prior to play and even provided the possibility of a back history.
The Gumshoe system worked well in handling scenes and players’ questions about the investigation. We had long since complained that investigative games –even sessions of DnD or Traveller where we wanted a bit of intrigue or fancy plot- suffered owing to the fact that crucial clues could be missed and an interesting storyline short-circuited. The Gumshoe solution, which was that you got the clues you needed automatically but could pay extra to find out more and speed the investigation, seemed simple and direct. We liked the mechanical effect that our characters were differentiated in terms of their skills as investigators. This supported investigation-related roleplay effectively. We had fun playacting my PI’s interactions with the useless Arkham police (descending, enjoyably, into Chandleresque pastiche) as well as our Priest’s fractious encounters with rival clergymen.
I personally felt less happy about the way that General Skills, like Driving, were handled. Under this ‘sub-system’ (at least that’s how it felt to me) one chose how many points to spend and added this to a d6 to roll over a target number. Skills spent in this way were deducted from your individual skill pool until either the game ended or you had no points left. I understand that the system is abstract and that choosing when to spend points is meta-gaming, I really do. Like bennies or fate points, the mechanic gives the players a choice as to when their character can do well, and when they might fade a bit into the background. It also adds a bit of a tactical dimension to play. But the effect didn’t always feel right, particularly since skill points in a particular area are a resource whose scarcity in relation to upcoming challenges is not known (is there going to be much more Driving? Goodness only knows…). One unwanted outcome, I suspect, might be dull parsimony by players who are fearful that the points might be needed later. Maybe I’m too much of a Sim person at heart, but I felt dissatisfied that ALL of our characters, having used their points on Firearms (there was quite a bit of shooting), ended up blazing away at opponents as undifferentiated non-marksmen. ‘What does it mean, in game, when your points run out?’ one player asked and I sympathised with the question. The answer of course, is that it is not an in-game but a meta-game affair. But, in my opinion, even meta-game mechanics require some accommodation to in-game ‘authenticity’.
Special mention of some well -designed skills and skill names. I really liked Preparedness , which allows characters to have stuff on hand (Aha! I have screwdriver in my valise!). Fleeing: good to have this elevated to the status of a skill given the setting and genre. Scuffling: atmospheric name that I felt captured both the film noir notion of tough guys engaged in desperate fisticuffs, and the Lovecraftian sense that characters are thrashing ineffectually at terrible enemies.
What, then, about horror and dread? Actually, I felt it was partly successful. Like CoC, ToC uses sanity rules. Sanity (long-term mental health) and stability (operating normalness) are sensibly separated by the system. Since stability is a general skill it is handled in the same way as driving, described above. This suggests that players will never freak out at the start of a trail, but are likely to do so at the end as their stability (which they lose even if they do not risk any) runs out. I actually think that the mechanic works well here. The general skill rules felt odd at times in relation to, say, electrical repair. But the sense of uncertainty and risk implicit in one’s decision to gamble skill points- on a roll that might anyway fail - made good sense in relation to mental stability.
The stability check system was a good effort at mechanically emulating characters’ experience of horror. A high target number for a stability check creates correspondent player stress and a sense that they will have to take a risk with their precious points. Not bad, and I like the simplicity. But Lovecraftian play is surely about horror as much as investigation, so it needs a great horror –supporting mechanic. Maybe this is too tall an order. How could a sense of dread be conveyed except via means of the GM’s description? I don’t know, obviously. Perhaps players could be invited to suggest the target number for sanity checks themselves, based on how scary they felt the situation to be. This would focus their attention on scene descriptions so as to assess their potential scariness. Maybe, using an analogy with the stunts in Savage World’s Thrilling Tales, players could ‘up’ the check themselves (and be mechanically rewarded for doing so) by suggesting how details of scenes could be made more terrible or uncanny.
But that’s asking a lot, and there is plenty in the game to praise and be enjoyed. The Gumshoe system is an investigation-oriented one, and this orientation is well suited to many Mythos scenarios. We enjoyed playing our characters and didn’t have too much trouble picking up the system. I’d recommend it. It might not work for some scenario types or for some groups, but my guess is that it would be EXCELLENT for many specific adventures which have interesting clues and a varied enough trail. I’d like to play again.
