{"id":592,"date":"2021-05-11T08:36:47","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T12:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/?p=592"},"modified":"2021-12-05T13:54:00","modified_gmt":"2021-12-05T17:54:00","slug":"homebrewing-an-investigative-horror-rpg-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/homebrewing-an-investigative-horror-rpg-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Homebrewing an Investigative Horror RPG, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"142857<\/a><\/p>\n

[This post may seem arcane for the uninitiated; it is on the topic of<\/em> roleplaying games<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

For a long time, I have wanted to gamemaster an investigative horror roleplaying game that involved the Cthulhu mythos<\/a>. The problem was finding a game system and setting that balanced my players’ expectations with my own. I’ll focus here on system, and detail setting<\/a> in subsequent posts.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For systems, there were the obvious choices: Call of Cthulhu<\/em> (Chaosium), Trail of Cthulhu<\/em> (Gumshoe), Delta Green<\/em> (Arc Dream), Fate of Cthulhu<\/em> (Fate). But none of them were familiar to my players.\u00a0We’ve played all editions of Dungeons & Dragons<\/em>, but using the latest edition (5th) wasn’t appealing to us, having played it for a few years and found it wanting. I also considered the various OSR offerings\u2014preferring their lightweight rulesets\u2014but my players prefer rulesets with more complexity.<\/p>\n

In the end, we settled on a modified version of 1st edition Pathfinder<\/a>\u00a0for several reasons.<\/p>\n

First, my players and I were all familiar with this system, having recently finished a yearlong play-through of a mega-dungeon (The Emerald Spire<\/em>) with that system. We were happy with its rule fixes that improved upon the older original system of D&D 3.5, and that it had a solid focus on classes and archetypes rather than branching off into innumerable and obscure prestige classes.<\/p>\n

Second, Pathfinder offers a lot of useful material for investigative horror: Occult Adventures<\/em>, Horror Adventures<\/em>, Ultimate Intrigue<\/em>. There are many Cthulhu mythos monsters scattered through its six Bestiary<\/em> books. And there is Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfind<\/em>er<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Third, since 1st edition Pathfinder has reached end-of-life in terms of development, Pathfinder is, to me, a “complete” system. As such, modifying the system to suit the setting is a subtractive rather than an additive process.<\/p>\n

Races, Classes, and Magic<\/h2>\n

As part of this process, I limited race selection to human only, with certain additional optional human traits allowed for variety. Elves, dwarves, goblins, and other fantasy races are merely fairy tales in this setting.<\/p>\n

I selected a list of 16 classes (out of 40) from the Pathfinder ruleset that were appropriate for the setting, eliminating anything unsuitable for a low-magic campaign. Class archetypes were similarly limited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n
    \n
  • Alchemist<\/li>\n
  • Barbarian<\/li>\n
  • Brawler<\/li>\n
  • Cavalier<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
    \n
  • Fighter<\/li>\n
  • Gunslinger<\/li>\n
  • Investigator<\/li>\n
  • Medium<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
    \n
  • Mesmerist<\/li>\n
  • Occultist<\/li>\n
  • Ranger1<\/sup><\/li>\n
  • Rogue<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n
\n
    \n
  • Slayer<\/li>\n
  • Spiritualist<\/li>\n
  • Swashbuckler<\/li>\n
  • Vigilante<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n
1<\/sup> Skirmisher only.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

What is notable about these classes is that none of them have access to potentially game-breaking or genre-breaking magic. There are no full spell-casting classes: no wizards, sorcerers, clerics, druids, psychics, bards, etc. None of the selected classes have spells levels higher than six, and spell level progression is slow. None have divine magic. Few use arcane magic. Some use psychic magic, which I find more suitable for this setting.<\/p>\n

Additionally, I made magic items extremely rare. They are never sold in shops. One may be guarded jealously by a private collector, or lost in old ruins, but they are not piled in treasure troves. The secrets of making magic items (except for potions) has been lost.<\/p>\n

Due to these class and magic item limitations, healing magic is extremely limited. A character in this setting would not go to the party cleric to receive divine healing. Instead, they may quaff a medicinal concoction, or receive first aid, or visit a hospital to rest and recuperate from any injuries suffered. And since no character can cast raise dead<\/i> or resurrection<\/i>, for the PCs, death is not just a temporary setback\u2014it is final.<\/p>\n

Without the real threat of death, there is no real horror.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This post may seem arcane for the uninitiated; it is on the topic of roleplaying games.] For a long time, I have wanted to gamemaster an investigative horror roleplaying game that involved the Cthulhu mythos. The problem was finding a game system and setting that balanced my players’ expectations with my own. I’ll focus here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beyond-thule","category-tabletop-gaming"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":749,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions\/749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}