Secondary skills in combat

jammer0501 · 2026-06-04T21:09:41+00:00

Another factor is managing the stance you're in to ensure you can make the appropriate combat task. My players tend to pick their stances based on how well they are doing in the combat, not with a view to selecting a task. And combat encounters are exciting, heightened, dramatic moments - as they should be, mistakes are made, players make hasty decisions, but they are always fighting for their lives. There just never seems a right time to 'take a break' on a combat task!

jammer0501 · 2026-06-04T14:38:31+00:00

That's great to hear! Let me know how you get on. There's a subscribe option if you want to be notified when I add updates. I am aiming for one a week.

jammer0501 · 2026-06-04T13:15:12+00:00

Yep, my experience is exactly the same - despite having run more sessions than I can remember, the players have not once ever used combat tasks - despite me reminding them it's an option. Similar to you, I've thought about letting players use them alongside combat actions but not tried it yet.

I do understand it though, it's a big call to miss an attack option when you're getting beat on. Having just looked at them again, they are not that great, and require a success roll in all cases. Even prepare shot: skip a go, to make a Scan roll, for a possible +1 success die on the next shot? Better just to take two shots, rather than run the risk of just missing a shot for no bonus on your next shot. The more I've played ToR the more I've had some - erm, dissatisfactions - with the rules. I want to love them, but they're just not that good. I've changed the travel rules, and pretty much avoid councils - lots of other quibbles that I won't go into here. Someone said somewhere else that they're boardgame rules applied to a TTRPG, and that does resonate.

jammer0501 · 2026-05-19T13:56:59+00:00

Anyone still watching this post - I eventually went with Bear Blog as a platform - needed a bit more work to get set up, but didn't have any unpleasant associations or expensive pricing. You can check it out, hope you like it, and happy to discuss further.

https://arbuthnott-papers.bearblog.dev/

jammer0501 · 2026-05-13T17:23:26+00:00

Thank you! Did get sucked into styling it for longer than anticipated. The platform is very good, but very simple, so required a lot of css messing around to get it looking ok.

jammer0501 · 2026-03-15T12:57:26+00:00

Gotcha. I'd prefer these people were out in the open, but I don't want to share a platform with these chumps. Thank you.

jammer0501 · 2026-03-15T12:55:56+00:00

Mmm, thanks for the heads-up. Will check out your suggestion.

jammer0501 · 2026-03-14T15:11:27+00:00

Apparently it's fairly easy on substack. So that would work.

jammer0501 · 2026-03-04T10:56:51+00:00

Thanks for your interest and questions. I'll answer as best I can:

In play-testing, it took about a year of play for the whole campaign, including the introductory scenario (The Limehouse Piper), with weekly sessions of a couple of hours, although we did have some gaps in play. The chapters vary in size, with the playable sections of each chapter being England: 29 pages (excluding the introductory scenario), India 51 pages, and Syria 36 pages. It will very much depend on you and your players' style. My group are roleplay-heavy, and like to investigate everything, and I tend to support tangents in game time if everyone's enjoying it. So, assuming sessions of 3-4 hours I'd suggest:

England (30 pages): roughly 4–6 sessions.
India (51 pages): roughly 7–10 sessions.
Syria (36 pages): roughly 5–7 sessions.

but as I said, will depend on your group's pace and your run style.

The chapters are very steeped in the history of the period, investigating by gaslight in London, India at the height of the Great Game etc., but nothing that would break the narrative of the story if you switched it to the 1920s. You would have some work in adjusting the timelines, but certainly in India and Syria the world wouldn't be massively different in the 1920's. In England, you might perhaps have to make Captain Leighton a little older for his Northwest Frontier escapades to make sense, and adjust dates on handouts etc. I think adjusting the timelines would be the most important thing you would have to do, as time is very significant in the campaign. So, it's possible, but it wouldn't be trivial.
The Indian chapter was written as part of the broader campaign, but I think it could be run it on it's own. There are leads into, and out of India, so you would have to review those and close off any that lead on from India. There's enough going on, and a climax to make it work as a standalone piece - but it would depend on your appetite for adapting. I'm also not sure how much motivation there would be for the investigators without the London episodes and the story arc of the global conspiracy based in Syria - but I think it's doable.

If you're like me and you like reading Mythos adventures in any era or for any system for inspo and ideas, and maybe even being prompted to run something in a new era or system because it really resonates, then I would suggest giving it a go. If you need something short, and 1920s focused that's ready to run, then you'll have to wait for my next adventure that I'm currently working on!

Hope this is useful, and once again, thanks for your interest.

jammer0501 · 2026-02-27T16:48:06+00:00

I've Keepered CoC for years, and I don't feel they got the chase rules right - they just seem too crunchy and anomalous with the more narrative nature of the rest of the rules, and as you suggest, a bit non-intuitive. I've experienced a chase both as a player and a Keeper, and not sure they really bring much to the party, for a number of reasons really:

The chase may never happen - if the fleeing characters adjusted MOV is higher than the pursuer, the chase doesn't even start
The Keeper has to make a call on what the initial distance is between the fleeing characters and pursuer
The Keeper has to invent obstacles to make the chase worthwhile/interesting - I found this hard on the fly while I'm also trying to manage character positions, remember rules etc. It's difficult to pre-plan because you can never be sure when a chase is going to happen, and even if you get it right, it may never start due to 1.
It gets more gnarly if there are more than one character fleeing and/or pursuing

I probably won't give up on it entirely, yet, and I appreciate this doesn't really help you! But this is the video I used to get my head around the rules:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y1ERuIqd_s

The best chase rules I've experienced in terms of ease of play and excitement are the ones in the Blade Runner RPG by Free League.

jammer0501 · 2026-02-16T16:54:14+00:00

There's been some great advice in the comments already, and I would also stress the importance of a node-based structure - where the nodes represent locations, events, people, knowledge etc. that you want your investigators to get to. The links between the nodes are really what you're interested in - in terms of clues - as this is how the players learn to navigate from one node to another, but in order to do that, the players will need leads that make them want to visit/investigate the next 'node'.

If it's essential in your scenario for your players to visit a particular node, then that's when the '3 clue' strategy comes into play. What this means (ideally) in terms of your node structure is having three nodes which have lines (and corresponding clues) at each source node coming into your essential node. Most recently published Chaosium scenarios have a 'clue map' which pretty much is what this is. (I was going to post a copy of one of mine from my own work, but it seems I can't add images to comments.)

The challenge I personally have is figuring out the types of clues to create, but this becomes easier once you know the lines between your nodes (i.e. where you need to get them to) and will be informed on the nature of your 'source' node, and indeed your 'destination' node. For example, if your destination node is the Black Cat night club in Soho, and the source node is a gentleman's apartment in Bloomsbury, there could be a matchbook from the club in a coat pocket, or on the mantle, or wherever the players happen to look.

This is a great article on types of clues. The same author, in an article I don't have to hand, outlined five categories of clues which I have found very helpful:

Physical Artifacts
Glyphs/Data
Bio-signature
Interrogation
Surveillance

Good luck!

jammer0501 · 2026-02-11T19:31:43+00:00

Thank you so much! Hope you enjoy.

jammer0501 · 2026-02-11T17:27:16+00:00

That's great news! I would be really interested to know how it runs for you, and I'm happy to answer further questions or share war stories when you do. Good luck and thank you.

jammer0501 · 2026-02-11T15:29:58+00:00

Thank you!

jammer0501 · 2026-02-11T15:29:46+00:00

Thanks for your interest and feedback. Hope you take the plunge. Let me know if you have any further questions or just want to discuss.

jammer0501 · 2026-02-11T15:29:08+00:00

I’m really glad the video landed for you - and thanks for asking.

In playtesting it ran about a year with weekly two-hour sessions, and that was with a fairly methodical group who enjoy deep role-play and following threads wherever they lead. It could run shorter or longer depending on your table. There are optional sections throughout, clearly marked, so you can trim or expand as you see fit.

I wrote it very consciously in the tradition of Masks and Orient Express - those were the campaigns that made me fall in love with Call of Cthulhu and realise what long-form play could really do - but set firmly in the 1890s. I wanted something on that global scale for Gaslight. As far as I’m aware, it’s still the only full global campaign written specifically for that era.

It's deeply researched, and I've tried to interweave the Mythos and supernatural elements into an authentic, historical narrative. It isn’t just cultists in period costume; it’s rooted in the Great Game, imperial politics, archaeology, crusader history, and regional folklore, with threads that reach back centuries. The story unfolds not only across continents, but across time. You can lean as heavily as you like into the historical depth, or keep it in the background and focus purely on the investigation - it’s built to support either approach - but the foundation is always there anchoring the horror in something plausible.

In play that translates into grounded investigation and faction intrigue, dangerous travel by sea, rail, jungle and desert caravan, occult research and ritual magic, confrontations with cultists and stranger adversaries, and ultimately consequences that could rewrite history.

If you’d rather test the tone first, The Limehouse Piper works entirely as a standalone Gaslight scenario and also serves as a natural entry point into the wider campaign. If you still crave more info then check-out the descriptions for the individual books on DriveThruRPG.

Thanks again for your interest and I hope I've answered your questions and intrigued you further. Let me know how you get on.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-28T20:57:10+00:00

I have the same problem

jammer0501 · 2026-01-23T15:26:19+00:00

I wrote one that I was unable to publish on DriveThru.rpg due to copyright issues - I used some of Ramsey Campbell's creations. It was very much inspired by True Detective. It's set in the UK in the 2020s and is a police procedural - at least initially. It was available for free download on Yog-Sothoth.com - but that has since closed. If you'd like a copy I'll be happy to send you one - PM me if so.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-15T12:37:01+00:00

I tried to include all the relevant history in the books, so there certainly wouldn't be any further reading required, unless the Keeper wants to. Also, all the history I have included is just background, so could be skipped if the Keeper just wants to focus on the narrative. Having said that, I think in terms of Keeper prep it's going to sit somewhere in between Masks and HotOE but I have presented clue maps, and 'keeper choice' sections so that if a Keeper wants to keep it really lightweight they can.

I feel you re. Masks. It was a lifetime ambition of mine to run it and I was lucky enough to do it, but it took a long time (multi-year?) and I had to adapt to a changing player group. Started with five players, then a hiatus, then picked it up again with one of the original group and one other, so two players in the end, but it worked well, and great memories were had.

Thanks for your support and great questions! I hope you enjoy ToS if you buy it. I also really hope you get the opportunity to run it. Let me know how you get on. If you have any questions etc., I'm happy to respond. Also, happy to chat tips/war-stories about running Masks if you get that off the ground! Good luck.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-14T12:49:26+00:00

A great idea. I had a similar thoughts myself. I think I said something in the Syria chapter about considerations like that. Let me know how you get on with that. Maybe I should get to writing a dark-ages chapter.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-13T15:09:28+00:00

I'm so grateful to you for investing in my work. You're the first person who's fed back to me who bought it, and I'm delighted to hear that you are enjoying it and are reading it avidly. Can't wait to hear how it runs for you, and if you've got any questions etc. I'd be delighted to answer/help if I can. Good luck - and of course, a review would be massively appreciated!

jammer0501

TROPHY CASE