Play@YSDC

Here's the obligatory OOC Topic. Post Absence Announcements, random stuff that doesn't belong in the game, and other such nonsense. There's no such thing s a stupid question; ask me or Leestriter if you have enquiries.

I'll be checking over and handling character sheets.

Great.

Character creation rolls:
STR, CON, POW, DEX, APP:
[dice]0[/dice]
[dice]1[/dice]
[dice]2[/dice]
[dice]3[/dice]
[dice]4[/dice]
SIZ, INT:
[dice]5[/dice]
[dice]6[/dice]
EDU:
[dice]7[/dice]
Personal Wealth:
[dice]8[/dice]
I won't have time tonight to finish creating my character, but I should tomorrow. Am I allowed to rearrange my rolls between different stats rolled on the same dice, or do they need to be taken in order? I like most of them where they are anyway, so I probably won't swap more than a couple.

Feel free to swap them around! I trust that you won't fudge the stats. Take as much time as you want! We aren't running a tight schedule here since there's not a lot of players yet. Take your time and try and create the best character possible.

Great to have the first sheet submitted, and it looks good.

My character sheet is partway done, but I haven't had time (or sleep) lately. I have something that I absolutely have to get done first this weekend, but if I have time left after that I'll finish it then.

Mr. Handy wrote:My character sheet is partway done, but I haven't had time (or sleep) lately. I have something that I absolutely have to get done first this weekend, but if I have time left after that I'll finish it then.

No worries!

HelplessBystander wrote:Feel free to swap them around! I trust that you won't fudge the stats. Take as much time as you want! We aren't running a tight schedule here since there's not a lot of players yet. Take your time and try and create the best character possible.

Hey this is a Call of Cthulhu game! Do you really think stats are going to be much use to us against the unimaginable horrors out there?

crawlingchaosfan wrote:

HelplessBystander wrote:Feel free to swap them around! I trust that you won't fudge the stats. Take as much time as you want! We aren't running a tight schedule here since there's not a lot of players yet. Take your time and try and create the best character possible.

Hey this is a Call of Cthulhu game! Do you really think stats are going to be much use to us against the unimaginable horrors out there?

Again, it's not. But stats encourage role-playing, such as an APP of 4 would make your Character the human equivalent of a Deep One and an APP of 3 might make NPCs lose SAN...

Exactly. I've only swapped two stats, STR and DEX, which is just a shift of one point for each, but it fits my character a little better. Everything else is fine where it is.

A Deep One would have an APP of 0. A Deep One Hybrid that's fairly far gone might have an APP of 3 or 4.

Depends on te context for APP. Is it scaled with a human's aesthetic tastes or an impartial ranking of unpleasant attributes to the vast majority. Because the way I see it, ranking it like this would imply Dagon have an APP Attribute of -2. Which doesn't make sense. An app of 0 is just a gelatinous blob of execretory slime. APP of 1 should be either Nyarlathotep's unappealing howler or bloody tongue avatar whilst Cthulhu would be a 3. I imagine Azathoth have no APP attribute.

The rulebook does scale it to a human perspective, I think. Very few monsters even have an APP stat. Nyarlathotep's human avatars are an exception to this, and their APP is extremely high. 3-18 is the normal human range, though humans who get disfigured can end up with an APP below 3. Deep One Hybrids do have an APP stat, which is rolled on 2D6-1. The most attractive among them will have an 11, whereas they can go as low as 1 for the mostly fishy ones. for which I increase the Sanity penalties. A "normal" Deep One Hybrid has a Sanity loss of 0/1D4, but this can be higher. I've had one with an APP of 1 cause 1/1D6 Sanity loss, which is a little worse than a full Deep One's Sanity loss of 0/1D6. I chalk this up to the "uncanny valley" effect from realizing that the monster is partly human.

Mr. Handy wrote:The rulebook does scale it to a human perspective, I think. Very few monsters even have an APP stat. Nyarlathotep's human avatars are an exception to this, and their APP is extremely high. 3-18 is the normal human range, though humans who get disfigured can end up with an APP below 3. Deep One Hybrids do have an APP stat, which is rolled on 2D6-1. The most attractive among them will have an 11, whereas they can go as low as 1 for the mostly fishy ones. for which I increase the Sanity penalties. A "normal" Deep One Hybrid has a Sanity loss of 0/1D4, but this can be higher. I've had one with an APP of 1 cause 1/1D6 Sanity loss, which is a little worse than a full Deep One's Sanity loss of 0/1D6. I chalk this up to the "uncanny valley" effect from realizing that the monster is partly human.

I see...interesting proposition.

Beauty is a subjective thing.

I happen to know there are a few people in Innsmouth who find deep ones quite sexy

Oh yes, oh yesyesyesyesyes. *Pants and breathes heavily*

For anyone who doesn't know, I will be giving a helping hand on this game, sort of co-gm.

Yep. Rounds of applause for lee.

Yes, thank you.

I'm sorry I haven't had time yet to finish creating my character. I'm hoping I can get it done this coming weekend.

No worries. Spend a second much time as you want. We still want to get as many people onboard as possible.

Hi Lee (sounds like a martial arts star doesn't it)?

Just to let you know I'm still around for when this one gets started.

Trust me, we all are. It’s just kinda hard to get enough people on board with this idea. We’ll see how it goes, and we are also waiting for mr. Handy’s submission.

HelplessBystander wrote:Trust me, we all are. It’s just kinda hard to get enough people on board with this idea. We’ll see how it goes, and we are also waiting for mr. Handy’s submission.

I know what you mean. After returning to rping after several years I've found things seem to have slowed down quite a bit. One site I rejoined used to be particularly active and now its really slow.

Nothin' you can do about that. People are just busier now than in 2002.

Is anybody there?

Yeah

Yeah

This is not dead; but dreaming. For what is not dead may eternal; for in Strange Aeons, even death may die. Iä! Iä!

Alright, you know what? Rather than passively waiting around for everyone's flame of passion to burn out, I think we're just going to wing it and wait for people to slowly join in instead. We're going to start the prologue scenario tonight and we'll see whether this campaign can be adjusted to be playable with only 2 PCs and 2 GMs.

Alright, there's probably a few question of historical Chinese currency in a chaotic time of infighting and international hostility in general. There's not exactly a lot of sites that I could draw knowledge from (most are more interested in the HISTORY of the Chinese currency rather the actual conversion rates between them) and the conversion rate's a bit fuzzy since the records of the Chinese Mainland Yuan conversion rates aren't an easy find on the interwebs. So here's my best attempt at outlining a good conversion table on converting between Mainland China Yuan, US Dollars, and the British Pound Sterling:

Era	US Dollar ($)	Old Yuan (¥)	British Pound (£)
1920	1	1.9	0.2729
	5	9.5	1.3645
	10	19	2.729
	100	190	27.29

I'm citing my information from http://www.historicalstatistics.org/, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_(cur ... ly_history, so I'm about 75% sure I got it right. I think the conversion is historically accurate. Have a good day!

Sorry guys. I had no idea this game had started.

Yeah, no worries. It's just that no one else seemed to be interested and it seemed to me to be a bit unfair to hold it out over the people who actually are interested.

Wow. This place is really quiet...

Have you thought about rewriting the blurb to introduce your scenario? You don’t give much indication about what participants can expect; it mainly seems to be background, which isn’t really necessary. What is the nature of the threat that they face? What will they have to overcome? Add some drama and mystery to it without giving too much away and it might increase interest.

Thanks for the tip.

Alright, I've rewritten the descriptive blurb to make it look better. How's this?

On the lunar calendar, it is the twelfth of July, 1920; in three days' time, the good people of China will celebrate 中元節, the festival of the dead. The great festival is an ancient tradition shrouded in dark rumours and whispered tales. Now, this festival will be celebrated publicly in Peking city, open to the gazes and inquiries of foreigners. During this month, the 阴气, the aura of death, is at its strongest; it will be during this month that the dead may influence the living realm with an eldritch plot of horror and madness...

I've updated the blurb for you.

Awesome.

Yes, that has more mystery. New players will hopefully be more enthusiastic about joining.

Are guys looking for an extra hand?

Ooh yeah, definitely. Wanna join DrPeterson?

Yes, please join us! I'm playing the aunt of Elisabeth Grey (from Forbidden Journey) in this one, and right now I'm the only player.

Exactly, I had originally enlisted Lee as assistant KP because I wanted to incorporate a few side storylines into the plot as well because 3+ people said they're interested...and then most of them kinda dropped off the bandwagon.

Oh, the dainty Mss Grey, I can't say I remember liking her

I'd love to join.
I'll roll and write up by Monday.
Any particulars I should be mindful of?

There's not a lot of actual limits, just make sure that your character have an intrinsic motive to join and some sort dark, terrible secret since the antagonistic mythos creature will mess with your character's mind at multiple points of the game. I'll need to alter certain parts of the rules as well to re-adjust for the small number of players. Obviously, the sandbox dreamland side will have to be scrapped, and the whole serial killers thing will feel very anti-climatic when the entire scenario is meant to play out over only four acts.

Sorry for the delay, but with the sudden snow storm, we've had a bit of an increase in work load.
I'll get on it this week.
<3

No worries.

I'm thinking about playing an older gentleman, a professor of sorts. So let's see what the dice say.

[dice]0[/dice]
[dice]1[/dice]
[dice]2[/dice]
[dice]3[/dice]
[dice]4[/dice]
[dice]5[/dice]
[dice]6[/dice]
[dice]7[/dice]

Not too shabby

5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 18

Just checking to see if this game is still going on ?

It is! My first post as co-gm, I will get into the hang of it, I promise.

Hey guys, I know that I haven't been very active in my own game nor have I really being very clear about the overarching story thus far. If you have any non-plot related queries or feedback thus far, I'd love it. I feel like I'm not doing as well as a KP is supposed to in a situation like this. Did I set the mood well? Anything I could improve upon in IC chapter one? Maybe some confusion about the NPCs that I've introduced or the role that William Isaac Hewitt shall play in this story after becoming an NPC? Please do ask questions.



-HelplessBystander

Everything is fine as far as I am concerned.

Maybe it would be worth it to try to recruit a few more players ?

Aye, I agree with the above.
This is still very much the introduction, so don't worry.
A few more souls to the party would indeed liven it up a little.

If everyone, and especially the Keeper, agrees, I could try to recruit more players.

No worries. You’re welcome to recruit more people to join, it’s just that once the prologue is done, they would either need to be train passengers from a different railway line, or a foreigner that’s lived here for a long time, or a Nat resident.

I'm fine with the game so far too, and I also think recruiting new players is a good idea.

So I posted this on the Call of Cthulhu forum of Facebook:

This is a call for recruiting players to join the Call of Cthulhu 6e or 7e version of Dead Men Walking. This scenario takes place in China during the year 1920, and is just starting now. It is played on the Play by Post YSDC dedicated forum.
The prerequisites are as follows:
1) You need to be the owner of a copy of the Call of Cthulhu 6e or 7e Rules (pdf or paper).
2) You must be able to post on average once every 48h-72h (2-3 times a week), excluding significant real-life issues (contact directly The Keeper by PM if that is the case).
3) You must abide by the Community Rules of YSDC ( Short version: Use common courtesy in your posts & Respect others).
Here is the link to the YSDC forum site guidelines:
viewtopic.php…
Here is the link to the Keeper of this scenario:
memberlist.php…


Let's see what happens ...

I saw that post on the fb page. This'll be my first PbP adventure, but looking forward to some Cthulhu action. I'm kinda new to message boards in general so hopefully I'll learn the controls quickly.

I'll roll for stats here since this seems to be the place to do it.

3d6 str, wil, app, con, mag, dex (not necessarily in this order)
[dice]0[/dice]
[dice]1[/dice]
[dice]2[/dice]
[dice]3[/dice]
[dice]4[/dice]
[dice]5[/dice]

2d6 + 6 int, siz
[dice]6[/dice]
[dice]7[/dice]

3d6+3 edu
[dice]8[/dice]

1d10 money
[dice]9[/dice]

Welcome !

PbP is a bit mystifying at the very beginning, but you will see that you will get used to it pretty quickly.

Have you sent a message to our Keeper ?

Just a couple messages under an "Existing games looking for players" post.

I hate sounding like a wet blanket on the first day, but those opening attributes I rolled are quite less than desired. 5, 7, 7, 9, 9, and 10. The average for a 3d6 roll is 10.5. I was hoping to play a former soldier or criminal, someone a little beefier. I know CoC can be gruesome, but would it be alright if I rerolled those six, or total refill, whatever the keepers prefer? I'd keep whatever the new values were; if they're just as low or worse, well then that's just gods telling me this guy is gonna be soft.

You're welcome to insert whatever character so long as they aren't a) a politician, or b) anti-establishment terrorist. These are the only two occupations that aren't allowed in the scenario. Feel free to reroll the whole set.

Here are my rolls for a character....I'm thinking a Protestant missionary.

First 5 stats
[dice=string,total]0[/dice]
[dice=string,total]1[/dice]
[dice=string,total]2[/dice]
[dice=string,total]3[/dice]
[dice=string,total]4[/dice]

Int/Siz
[dice=string,total]5[/dice]
[dice=string,total]6[/dice]

Edu
[dice=string,total]7[/dice]

Wealth
[dice=string,total]8[/dice]

Alright, here we go:

5 stats
[dice]0[/dice]
[dice]1[/dice]
[dice]2[/dice]
[dice]3[/dice]
[dice]4[/dice]

Int/siz
[dice]5[/dice]
[dice]6[/dice]

Edu
[dice]7[/dice]

Money
[dice]8[/dice]

Ok, so 7, 11, 12, 12, 14, then 12 & 12, edu of 18 (accidentally has +6 instead of +3) and money of 9. That'll suffice. And I see we already have a soldier.

So it looks like several more of us joined after the prologue. Are we going to still be on the train or is there a different way we are going to be introduced to the other players?

A few is going to be located directly in China. The remainder would be people that missed the party.

Just checking in to see if the game is still rolling down the tracks, as it were.

I really hope so.

Same here

I'm also waiting in the wings.

Sorry about the wait. It's just that I have lot to sort out IRL. I haven't contact Lee yet with the updated scenario overview, and I would personally like to involve him a bit more in the future...I don't know, I'll try getting in a post before monday. Thanks for the wait!

Argh, short thing I forgot.
Feel free to puppet me along for a while, I'll be out of town the next six days, doing archeology in the woods (which is fun with a prognosis of - 10 °C / 14 °F) and don't know yet whether I'll have internet there.
----
https://wuerfel.orkenspalter.de/index.php?id=150502
Spot Hidden: 18

Sure, no worries.

Where and what are you digging, Henderson?

I'm a bit confused. Do you want us to try to get together on our own or are we going to be running individual storylines or will you create a reason for us to be together as the plot thickens...

If we are looking for a reason to get together, perhaps I could request a meeting with the other "foreigners" to support my missionary work in China?

I am confused also.

To get us back together, Mr Carver could also be writing an article about "the Occidentals who live and travel in Orient" ?

Starspawn338 wrote:I'm a bit confused. Do you want us to try to get together on our own or are we going to be running individual storylines or will you create a reason for us to be together as the plot thickens...

If we are looking for a reason to get together, perhaps I could request a meeting with the other "foreigners" to support my missionary work in China?

I think the direction to take thus far would be to run individual storylines that will gradually tie together as the plot thickens since that makes things less messy and give you guys more chances to RP. Apologies for not being as good a KP as I would've liked, though.

I'd totally missed the other thread. Sorry for the delay, guys!

As far as I am concerned, the faster we are all back together, the better !

No worries! I should be the one apologising for the delay, if anything.

I'm so sorry, just as we're about to get cracking on this I'm going on a last minute holiday and may be very intermittent posting if any. Will be away 8 Mar -3 Apr. Margery will tag along wherever Vivienne goes. GM please NPC her whenever necessary. Many thanks!

Hoi guys !

Just posting an anti-absence to announce my return from the wild. I'm back for all intents and purposes.

Fantastic! We'll get the game going in no time!

I guess I'm a little out of sorts. I had my character know Cantonese, not Mandarin, in case the group came across folks from around Hong Kong. And his job down there is mostly a convenient, under-the-radar cover. I'm not sure why he'd be up in the Beijing area and going to the university there as he doesn't speak the language and doesn't want to gain attention. If that doesn't work, I could come up with a more convenient character.

Hmm...well, I assumed that your character concept would come with a built-in hook. No matter, here, how about this: ‘Jack Kenning’, now Cantonese professor at the University of Hong Kong, was invited to Peking to open a seminar on Linguistics, and he was tempted by the idea that he could have a chance to earn some extra money as well as the opportunity to haunt the poor residents of BeiJing with his antics as a burglar.

Just as an aside, I would ask to you to format your character sheet with a space after the end of each paragraph, it is difficult to figure where the beginning and end of each paragraph is on a mobile device. If possible, I would prefer it if you could change your Dark Secret to something non-Mythos related. I know the idea sounds tempting, but one of the foolish assumptions made when building a CoC character is that they fundamentally have never encountered any Mythos activity, or think they haven’t anyways...this isn’t a there-is-a-Shoggoth-under-your-bed-and-your-neighbour-is-a-wizard type of game. I don’t to sound like I’m lecturing you, but I would prefer it if the Dark Secret is something is a visceral mundane trauma that you see in a gritty cops show. PM me if you’re uncertain.

I'm back, ready to post.

I was busy writing a book last month. Excuse me for the long unexplained absence as well. Formal apologies to everyone.

It's OK, no problem.

Alright, I finally got back in the game (excuse the pun), had been trying to get this back into full-swing for a while as I tried to find all my notes and tidy up the plot a bit. To my unfortunate discovery, I've found the document to be half corrupted after accidentally changing its file extension, and so I'm going to do what I could and rewrite what's there and give everyone a satisfying (albeit slow) game that everyone could be happy with as my first PbP game.

OK

It wouldn't be particularly fair to the others if they were hyped for a game and the only reason they couldn't play was just because the GM forgot all about it. So I'm going to try and get the game back in swing and hopefully finish the story to a satisfying conclusion.

Any news here ?

I would like this game to continue, if at all possible.

As would I. I know the Keeper logged in last Friday but hasn't posted in some time.

Sorry about this everyone, I couldn't keep a regular updating schedule for this game because many conflicting issues, and mostly just because I'm starting to lose the grip on what I intended to do with the story. I really just...Sorry. I'll get out of my rut and start posting immediately.

I'm going skiing next week, so might not be able to update timely because I would have little access to the internet.

I'm unclear if we are all in the same place or are being held in separate rooms.

You're all held in the same place.