Madness at Miskatonic UPDATED!

Despite best efforts to find the time to update Madness at Miskatonic, I have only just gotten around to this task. With this latest version there are a few continuity fixes and some more editorial/clarity changes. Thanks must go to Peter Cruise for his thorough eye and very helpful edits. The campaign notes are greatly improved because of his input. Thanks too to G. Roby picking up on some key timeline and linguistic issues. Both these fine individuals volunteered their time via the Yog-Sothoth forums and are fine examples of the collaborative community that resides there.

Without further ado:

Madness at Miskatonic: US Letter Version 3 (8.1MB)

Madness at Miskatonic with A4 cover Version 3 (8.3MB)

Quick post: Blood Money non-player Characters

I haven’t forgotten about this project. At some point I do intend to finally get all my campaign notes up about this Vampire: The Requiem game I finished over six months ago now… One of the issues when faced with a political game with a number of non-player characters is providing the players with a useful way of keeping track of everyone they meet. Once the primary antagonists had been introduced (gradually over a few sessions) I knocked up this play aid to put all the character’s contacts and foes in the one place. I include it here as it a) took a hell of a long time to edit all the images until I was satisfied with them and b) because it will help act as a useful reference point when I start spelling out a few basics about each of these NPCs and how I used them in my Moscow game setting.

These images are drawn from a variety of sources, stock, screen caps, creative commons… I am asserting no ownership over them at all. In the unlikely event that an owner has a problem with my using them here for not for profit reasons, I’ll gladly take the image down.

blood_money_npcs (1.4 MB PDF)

Madness at Miskatonic Teaser

Of course I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Putting together this mini-campaign for public consumption is taking a little longer than expected (no surprises there, I guess). What has been an important part of the process for me is balancing my desire to produce a user-friendly document with avoiding lengthy tracts of text that ramble on and on about the minutiae of each session. I want something that is part tool kit part “colouring book” providing just enough scope for Keepers to fill in the details based around their own idiosyncrasies. But enough of the griping.

For the time being here are some sample PDF pages from the final Madness at Miskatonic document:

Campaign Introduction example PDF

Non-player characters example PDF

Session One flow chart example PDF

Seven Towers

Digging around my hard drive today I came across this hand out that I put together for an Ars Magica session. It struck me that it could be useful as a play aid for other games. A Dreamlands session of Cthulhu an Arabic-themed fantasy game.

Cthulhu lite: Modern and Gaslight character sheets

Over at Yog-Sothoth fellow forum member Mysterioso suggested that a Gaslight and Modern version of my cut down character sheet would be useful. So here they are. They are much the same as the 1920s version (the notes on the “Cthulhu lite” system can be found here), with the following exceptions:

Gaslight: The skill “Drive” has been replaced with “Ride”. For simplicity this skill can also be used to drive carriages. Let’s not split hairs over such things.

Modern: The specialisation “Computers” should be added to the Investigation skill.

Cthulhu character sheet lite – Gaslight (221KB PDF)

Cthulhu character sheet lite – Modern (250KB PDF)

As always, I’d love to hear back from anyone who’s used these in their sessions

Cthulhu Tech Rules Overview

Here’s a quick info sheet I threw together for a one-shot Cthulhu Tech game I’ll be running on the weekend. I’ll print out a couple of copies for the table so the players can reference it. Other than this and character sheets, all other hand outs will be distributed to the players iPhones in game. Not sure if this gimmick will work, but I’m keen to bring a bit of tech to the table to add to the setting.

CthulhuTech – quick rules guide (168KB PDF)

FYI My approach will be very stripped back, non mecha version of the world setting. With a lot of back story tinkering to make it fit the way I see an Aeon war panning out. Characters will be Egyptian, Syrian and Israeli (these countries having put their differences aside in the wake of unspeakable horrors and alien invasions). Looks like it might pan out to be a good session. I might put up some notes next week if I feel it’s worth putting out there.

Call of Cthulhu lite: a cut down charactersheet

I’m a notorious tinkerer when it comes to RPG systems. I like to tailor the system to suit my style of GMing. While Call of Cthulhu is robust and fairly elegant system, there have always been a few elements that have bugged me about the overly extensive skill list available to player characters. This is my cut down version of the Call of Cthulhu character sheet. It plays exactly the same as the standard Call of Cthulhu system but with a few modifications.