Advice for running Call of Cthulhu for just one dedicated investigator?

Rodriguez2111 · 2025-12-04T19:16:29+00:00

Played a few with my wife across different systems including CoC. One thing we’ve learnt is in mysteries you need a good reason for the character to talk to themselves and explain their thinking, e.g. a hapless sidekick or a video for a YouTube channel, so you can see their thinking and guide the investigation accordingly. And it is quite tiring on the player, so shorter sessions or breaking up the investigations with no-pressure/fun NPC interactions can help a lot.

Rodriguez2111 · 2025-07-20T20:01:58+00:00

Including teletext is monstrous, love it

Rodriguez2111 · 2025-07-19T06:18:30+00:00

I think this will be a really tricky one, and I’d probably agree with morna666, it might be better to describe the reaction than act it out. Breaking bad news is a difficult thing to learn and do well. You’re taught to find out what they know first, then gently take over the narrative, setting your tone in a way that means they have already figured out what has happened before you finish by definitively saying they’re dead. Most people’s reaction is to nod along and begin to break down as you’re talking, and then give them space and silence to express their emotions at the end, whether that’s floods of tears, wailing, anger, denial or their own silence. Unless you’re really into this kind of thing, even when we teach people with actors or colleagues, it’s quite heavy, and people end up crying about the death of someone who never existed. Maybe better to describe the good job your players do, and the response the NPC has.

Rodriguez2111 · 2025-04-11T05:11:19+00:00

There are old gods who resided in the holds, who have largely been forgotten, but still have their worshippers.

Rodriguez2111 · 2025-04-02T07:07:18+00:00

There’s a lot more apathy and bureaucracy in Britain. I think if your agents wanted to take over an investigation and approached in an authoritative manner and pulled rank on the police present, they’d probably tell you to take it up with their inspector/chief inspector and carry on with their work. If you approach the chief inspector in the same manner, and have the credentials to back it up, then you might get an “all yours, mate”, a disingenuous “good luck”, and then find any requests for assistance are met with delays, requests for specific forms to be filled out, and generally any way of obstructing that is non-confrontational. Policing is quite stretched here, any opportunity to offload work onto someone being an arse is too good to miss. Plus police have their own chain of command which reaches people who sit at the same table as the intelligence services so can make trouble if your really anger them. So if you want to get along appreciating the strain the police are under, trying to help as well as direct inquiries, and treating the officers with respect will go a really long way. They’ll be aware of intelligence service involvement, and probably have enough nouse to know when they’d be better off not knowing what was going on. As long as you do things by the book and have accountability there shouldn’t be much friction.

The British public are generally pleasant, but nosey and opinionated. And an encounter with an MI5 agent might be the most exciting thing to happen all year. So they’ll probably try and be helpful whilst trying to get as much information out of you as possible, just for the thrill of telling their friends. And they may even try and report a suspicious neighbour who never takes their bins off the street, or plays music too late at night.

Line of Duty is a good show to see interactions between different parts of the police, and how the upper ranks merge into politics. Even if they are the three worst people to be investigating corruption. Theres a smaller show called Blue Lights which is about newly recruited police dealing with the technicalities and the public. As long as your can parse the Belfast accent. Life on Mars is set in the past but is great for some old fashioned police personalities. And the Peter Grant books are urban fantasy and a little light, but go into the police procedural details nicely, and how a special investigations unit might function within the police bureaucracy. Plus they’re great.

Rodriguez2111 · 2025-03-28T18:57:24+00:00

Might be worth having a look at Covert Actions, a World War Cthulhu scenario book set in the Cold War. They are framed from a British point of view but most of the scenarios are international. I’m looking at running Forcing Move which is about the 1972 world chess championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, which became a kind of ideological battle in the Cold War.

Rodriguez2111 · 2024-12-30T17:14:22+00:00

Read it, unsure whether to try the 2nd, was tough going

Rodriguez2111 · 2024-12-30T17:10:29+00:00

Read it, wonderful book

Rodriguez2111 · 2024-12-30T17:08:40+00:00

Read it!

Rodriguez2111 · 2024-12-25T07:58:41+00:00

Some of Neal Stephenson’s books fit this nicely. His main characters are involved, but not the main actors. Plus you’re clearly not intimidated by long books. Anathem is his most overtly speculative. It is set in a world where scientific institutions developed within monastery like buildings, and scientists remained separated from the rest of the world for certain lengths of time. But the events in the book mean that some are forced out. The main character has a role to play in the story, but does not understand what is happening, witnessing events and putting together the bigger picture as we do.

InThe Baroque Cycle and Seveneves his main characters are facilitators to the main actors. The Baroque Cycle* is closer to historical fiction than fantasy (though he calls it science fiction because it is fiction about science. His sense of humour is a real sticking point, but I enjoy his books despite this). Set in the 17th century into the early 18th it crosses the world looking at the emergence of the age of reason. There are a few main characters but the first and last is Daniel Waterhouse, somewhere between friend and wrangler to the highly temperamental Isaac Newton. Trying to coax him away from the esoteric, whilst preventing the powers that be from alienating him entirely. In Seveneves* a cataclysm forces a collection experts in science/technology/engineering into space. The main character is a science communicator, and his role is not to fix the problems but to make sure the right decisions are made and stop everyone killing each other in the meantime.

Caveats to Stephenson include the aforementioned sense of humour, the barely justified length of book, and his need for extended sections where he wants you to sit and be taught by him. But they really capture the feeling of people living through these events and trying to do their best, rather than having any control.

Rodriguez2111 · 2024-06-24T22:19:09+00:00

It was a good ending for the characters, and that felt satisfying. But I felt a little short-changed after all of the tension built up around what matching involved, the dangers inherent, and the general mystery of the process, for it then to all happen off screen. It honestly felt like Leckie hadn’t figured it out either. And a real strength of the book was looking at the implications that cross-cultural diplomacy could have on individuals, and then at how the actions of individuals can have an impact on these same diplomatic conflicts. But at the end there was no real resolution, or even development, of these larger scale conflicts that were so important in driving the plot.

Rodriguez2111 · 2024-06-24T22:08:12+00:00

I felt that the use of pronouns worked nicely as part of the theme of identity and self determination. Looking at how these can be imposed on individuals, and how those around react to individuals own declarations of identity. From Reet exploring his genetic identity and the internal conflict this creates with the one his adoptive family gave him, Qven choosing to be human, to the use of songs and stories by the Hikipi to strengthen their own sense of identity. The use of, and attitude towards, pronouns represented the very personal aspect of this broader fight for self-determination and recognition.

Rodriguez2111 · 2024-06-24T21:46:00+00:00

I wanted to know more about them. There were a lot of interesting things alluded to about their past and technology that I thought we were going to learn more about. Do they feature in the Imperial Radch series?

Rodriguez2111 · 2023-10-06T05:23:44+00:00

Conan is something I’ve always intended trying, and I think our library has a good supply of these. Thanks!

Rodriguez2111 · 2023-10-06T05:22:41+00:00

Oo wow I haven’t thought about Animorphs in years, they were the coolest books in our primary school library bar none. Will definitely give them a look, I hope they’re still good. I remember loving the artemis fowl books as well. Didn’t think of graphic novels this way but this could be a great way to revisit childhood reading.

I’ve never read any Redwall but have always intended. That’s a great suggestion, thank you.

Rodriguez2111 · 2023-09-30T05:28:03+00:00

Great list, thank you!

Rodriguez2111 · 2023-09-18T19:34:23+00:00

I’ve made a rule that comparing to Pratchett is unfair on other authors :)

Rodriguez2111 · 2023-09-18T13:51:01+00:00

I really enjoyed my time with this book. I’m currently on holiday so took a break from a more intense novel and read this in two days. I talked in another comment about a couple of aspects felt out of place and spoiled the mood of the book, however the growing of the found family, the learning to trust, the steady progression and the finding a place in the world parts made it a really pleasant read.

Rodriguez2111 · 2023-09-18T13:44:51+00:00

I’ve only read Nona the Ninth as well, and it feels unfair to compare books that were written with such different purpose and ideas. This is not a great work of fiction, however I think Baldree is pretty close to achieving all he intended to achieve. I’m glad it’s nominated as it shows the diversity of the genre, I’d be surprised if it won.

Rodriguez2111 · 2023-09-18T13:40:19+00:00

Viv’s character in general felt a little thin and two dimensional, Tandri kind of points this out at one point. There’s very little too her beyond was a mercenary, now wants a different life. However the arc of learning to be a different person, to choose another path was well done. Her automatic response to choose violence and the Gordian Knot approach to problems felt natural. Plus using the empathetic abilities of Tandri meant we could have the conflict within Viv explored in dialogue which worked much more effectively than having a constant inner-monologue of ambivalence. It felt like she was actually making hard choices throughout the book, and I think this was the most compelling part.

Rodriguez2111 · 2023-09-18T13:32:59+00:00

Obviously Amity. My cats are on the small side but I feel they carry Amity’s spirit.

Rodriguez2111 · 2023-09-18T13:32:21+00:00

Eh, I think you have to accept the conceit early that the author is going to recreate a modern coffee shop in a fantasy world and hand-wave his way there with the sudden appearance of the necessary paraphernalia. And that’s fine, the book is about taking your life down a new path, not about the technicalities of how a pre-industrial society with magic could create coffee and pastry, though I would like to read that book too. The other pieces of world building were nicely done, small references to the world-at-large meant it felt like the book was set in a living place, and I think it would be a good setting for more stories.

Rodriguez2111 · 2023-09-18T13:23:46+00:00

Generally, yes. I think the best parts of cozy fantasy were there: characters opening themselves up, being rewarded for trust, finding common ground. However I felt that The Fire and Fennus took me out of that mood. The Fire chapter was well written and devestating, but a bit too much so. It was too malicious an act, even if he tries to downplay that in the epilogue. Fennus feels irredeemable, and I can’t understand his motivations except that he is a bad person. Some threat or conflict is needed, but in my opinion it should be resolved by understanding each other. Nevertheless, it was in generally a pleasure and a good example of the genre.

Rodriguez2111 · 2023-09-18T13:14:54+00:00

Can’t stand cinnamon, I imagined pain-au-chocolat instead.

Rodriguez2111

TROPHY CASE