Fate of Cthulhu #2: Sessions 1-4

Last time I gave my overall thoughts about Fate of Cthulhu. This time I will talk about what happened (for the first few sessions at least).

#1 Session Zero

We started with session zero: character creation. Although FoC suggests you can play either someone from the present or a time-traveller, it’s obvious that time travelling is more fun. So we created our two travellers: Roman Valeyard, historian, and Kasper Ausritten, anarchist manipulator.

Time travellers start with a corrupted aspect (using magic is dangerous), so Roman started as a living corpse, while one of Kaspar’s eyes was replaced by one from a Hound of Tindalos. (So we’re already some way from our traditional Call of Cthulhu investigators.)

Jon and Terry reviewed their briefing and decided that of the four missions, they would start with the stuff that dreams are made of. So we started there.

#2 The stuff that dreams are made of

For this mission, the PCs must steal a corrupted idol that contains a flake of Cthulhu’s skin (or something). The idol is being auctioned, and the GM notes provide ideas for running the assault on the auction house.

My Trello card for the idol

With all of time to play with, Jon and Terry decided to arrive eight months before the auction and steal the idol from its original owner. So we’d barely started and we were already off-script.

(I didn’t mind improvising—Fate of Cthulhu’s GM notes aren’t great and I was happy to run something different.)

So I invented Angus McBride, 43rd Earl of Sutherland and his private castle on Eigg. I decided that the earl controls a small cult worshipping Cthulhu (with his housekeeper Mrs Cartilage as high priestess).

Before we finished, the PCs had time for a quick reconnoitre (they booked themselves on a castle tour).

One thing that surprises me with skills in RPGs is how often I encounter situations where a skill would be useful, but it’s not in the game. I find Fate of Cthulhu social skills a little weird. We have Deceive, Empathy, Provoke and Rapport. What we don’t have is Persuade (although Rapport is an okay substitute) or Intimidate. And I’m not sure I’ve ever needed Provoke.

Anyway, both Jon and Terry took Provoke, and we realised our error when they wanted to charm the tour guide and learn more about the earl and the castle. Provoke didn’t really work—so Jon swapped Provoke for Rapport and got the information they needed.

#3 Stealing Cthulhu

In our third session, we leapt straight into the action, and the PCs broke into McBride’s castle, interrupted a sinister ritual, killed the bad guys and grabbed the statue.

I was pleased how I ran this. I grabbed a floor plan from the internet (search for stately home floor plans) and ran the session using that.

I remembered to use my Fate points (which I often forget to use) and compelled both PCs, so it felt more like Fate than many of our sessions. The fight was perilous—Kaspar was wounded badly as the fight with Mrs Cartilage didn’t go well. (It turned out the players hadn’t taken any fighting skills!) But they succeeded in the end and now have the idol—but don’t know how to deal with destroy.

I should say right now that I have done so little planning for this. I grabbed a floorplan during the session, and I decided where the secret temple would be there and then. It helps that the missions are not well detailed in the book—they’re so vague they are easy to improvise around.

#4 Planning planning planning

The stuff that dreams are made of ends when the PCs destroy the idol. But how do they do that? Even the scenario in the book isn’t clear on the subject. So the PCs weren’t sure what to do next. So this session was one of those discussion sessions where the players tried to work out what to do next.

We had a few “proper” scenes of roleplaying (I had fun as the voice of the creepy idol), but most of the time, we discussed what to do next. I don’t mind this—it’s easy to GM, and the players seemed to enjoy exploring their options.

So the players travelled to Arkham and started the next mission, bytes and bodies, before finishing this one. Perhaps they’ll figure out how to deal with the idol in Arkham.

(This session’s gripe about skills concerned the lack of anything related to computers or programming—particularly as the next episode is all about the internet.)

Next time

Next time we’ll look at the next couple of sessions—and find out what happens when the PCs drop the idol into some hydrofluoric acid.