Craig Pay

Here’s a new house rule I’m adding to my Pulp Cthulhu games. It’s a riff on a similar rule in a Cubicle 7 publication, but I can’t say which one to avoid spoilers for my players!

Archetypes in Pulp Cthulhu seem somewhat forgotten beyond character generation. What’s to stop a Sidekick going Cold Blooded? Or an Outsider acting like a Bon Vivant?

This new house rule should encourage heroes to keep roleplaying the traits associated with their archetype, with a few bonus skill points awarded after each scenario as an incentive.

I like the skill-based system in Call of Cthulhu, but I’ve always thought that characteristics are somewhat underutilised, so I’ve decided to add the following house rule to my game…

A player may suggest the use of a characteristic instead of a skill roll to increase their chance of success, attempting the roll at one level higher difficulty: Normal requires a Hard Success, Hard an Exceptional Success, and Exceptional a Critical. The Keeper must deem the suggested characteristic appropriate: such as DEX for Throw or CON for Swim.

I love the Luck rules in Call of Cthulhu, and especially those in the Pulp rules. Here are three new Luck Spends and a modification to an existing rule. Feel free to use these (or not) in your own games!

“Keep Calm and Carry On!”

Cost: 20 Luck

A player may spend 20 Luck points to avoid the effects of Temporary or Indefinite Insanity. A subsequent loss of 1 or more points of Sanity will trigger insanity as normal.

Alternative names: “Oh dear. How sad. Never mind…” or “Always looks on the bright side of life! [sung]” or “Everything is AWESOME!” or “Hakuna Matata! [also sung]”

I’ve been running a Pulp Cthulhu campaign set in 1929 Chicago. The investigators have been running around the city, jumping in and out of taxis, on and off the “L”. They’ve had a few run-ins with the Mob and I know it’s only a matter of time before there’s a car chase.

Taking Mr Skorkowsky’s advice I bought some Models of Yesteryear cars and then I decided to create some road tiles using Inkarnate that I could drop onto the table. I’m planning on using these with the Chase rules in the Keeper’s Rulebook (p.130ff).

Here are the results. Feel free to download and print for your own game. And let me know if you have any ideas for more obstacles. So far I have wandering sheep in a rural setting and scattered crates in a city. The rulebook mentions two guys carrying a pane of glass–a classic!–there must be more.

I often lose track of who’s who around the table, especially at convention games when I’m meeting players for the first time.

Here’s a game aid I created for Call of Cthulhu: a name card which can be placed on the table in front of each player. Print it out and cut the edges as marked. Players can add their name, their investigator’s name, and any preferred pronoun for themselves and/or their investigator.

I’ll include a couple of links at the end of this blog post to download a couple of different versions, one with a QR code to the Cult of Chaos code of conduct page. Feel free to download and print whichever one you want to use.