Having had a couple of goes at Masks of Nyarlathotep in the past now, and seen what's worked and not worked for me, and given that this is a bit of a mammoth campaign to get through, even if it runs very smoothly - I've decided that it's probably best to try and allow the more prolific posters to set the pace. Then it's up to me to try and make sure nobody gets left behind.
So I'm going to try and make sure that I reply to any post that needs my attention within 24 hours, and would request that everyone else tries to do the same - so please make sure that you are subscribed to all the IC and OOC threads for the adventure. So long as nobody else is waiting for you to reply for longer than 24 hours, then you don't need to post more often than you like, but I won't wait around for "everyone to have a turn," and it's not necessary for players to wait around either - so if you don't need a reply from anyone else, it's okay to make multiple posts in the same day - eg I'm quite happy for a long multi-post conversation to take place between investigators while I'm asleep - even if I've got 10 pages of IC posts to catch up on.
The only things that I ask, are that you don't pre-empt your own arrival at a new location (you can post that you're leaving a house / room / city, but you need me to bring the next location into play) and that you don't dictate the actions of another investigator or npc.
If I'm waiting for a reply, or I see that another player is waiting for a reply for 24 hours or more, then I'll attempt to email the player, but will also attempt to help keep the game moving.
So for example, with the opening meeting with Augustus Larkin, at the bar in Lima, I'll allow conversations to commence between the first investigators to arrive and the npcs, without waiting for everyone - but I'll wait for everyone to arrive before moving to anything else.
This method worked well for my first attempt at Masks, things only slowed down when I waited around for too long when a very prolific poster suddenly vanished - it turned out that Nyarlathotep got him and he never returned!
For the above, I'll consider a 48 hour weekend to be the equivalent of a 24 hour weekday, but I'll still personally try to reply within 24 hours.
Rules:
I'm hoping to use the 7th Edition CoC rules, without any house-rules. If any house rules do become necessary, they'll be added to this post.
For character generation, the option to swap characteristic scores around after rolling them will be used - ie roll 3d6 five times and 2d6+6 three times, then assign as you wish.
The optional "experience packages" will be allowed (eg wartime experience for any investigator who served in the Great War).
All investigators are assumed to be "non-believers" when they begin play, unless specifically noted in their background. This even applies to anyone who selects the Mythos Experience package - it's assumed that they've read some books, but didn't believe them, like many Lovecraftian protagonists.
I'll attempt to use the chase rules at least once, as I expect they should work well in a play-by-post format and the campaign provides assistance for some expected chases. If they don't work well, then I'll drop them.
As there is little down time during the campaign - other than intercontinental travel times - I'll use whatever optional reading-faster rules exist for studying Mythos tomes. I'd prefer language and the limits of human comprehension / sanity to be the main barriers to learning, rather than massive study times. I've not actually remembered to check what options exist for this yet, but I'm prepared to bring in Pulp options for this, if need be.
7th Edition Special Rules
For the benefit of 5/6th edition players, without access to the 7e rules.
Pushing Rolls
If you fail a skill check roll, you have the option to ask whether you can push the roll, that is to make a second roll using either the same skill or a separate skill in a risky effort to mitigate the original failure.
- This occurs after the original failure, it is not a reroll, but is an attempt to try harder or take a bigger risk - hence "pushing the roll
- Normally failures other than fumbles to not directly result in hard things happening, for example a failed climbing roll merely means that you cannot make it all the way up or down. Pushing a roll though aways carries a risk.
- You must provide a justification for making a pushed roll and say which skill you'd like to push with, in the climbing example perhaps you could try climbing further despite the risk (Climb), or leap towards a ledge (jump), or even stretch for a distant handhold (SIZ).
- The Keeper (me!) will let you know if it's allowed, and the consequences of failure, in the climbing example perhaps you will fall 20 feet or the drainpipe will snap.
- After I've told you the consequences of failure you can either make the pushed roll or change your mind.
- You can't push combat attack rolls or similar 'instant' rolls, because you've already missed - this is never a reroll
- You can push a roll after a fumble, but you don't mitigate the effect of the fumble, because it's already happened - again this isn't a reroll
A roll of 01 is a critical success, meaning that something beneficial has occurred beyond a simple success. The benefit is at my discretion, but you are free to make suggestions.
A roll of 96-100 is a fumble. That means that something worse than a standard failure has occurred. Again this is at my discretion, but you are free to make suggestions.
If the chances of success for the roll was at least 50%, then a fumble only occurs on a roll of 100.
Bonus and Penalty Dice:
Sometimes during the game you will receive one or more bonus or penalty dice, due to favourable or adverse conditions.
In a tabletop game, this is a second "tens" d10 (ie, the 10,20,30... die).
With our dice roller you'd make an extra roll using d10*10 as each die.
For bonus dice the lowest of all the "tens" are used. For penalty dice the highest is used.
For example with a 1d100 roll of 24 and a 1d10*10 roll of 40:
With a bonus die the result would be 24.
With a penalty die the resulr would be 44.
Bonus / penalty dice are normally only used during opposed checks, but occasionally can be used for other checks. Normally only a single extra die will be used, but particularly beneficial or adverse conditions could grant two or more.
They cancel each other out, so you'll never have bonus and penalty dice on the same roll - although the opposing roll might have bonus/penalty dice of it's own.
Spending Luck
You may spend luck points on skill checks that would otherwise fail. Each one point of luck spent reduces your roll by one.
You cannot spend luck points on a pushed roll, or to avoid a fumble or combat malfunction.
Regaining Luck
For a tabletop game, you normally get to make an improvement check to increase luck at the end of each session of play. For this game, I'll let you know when you can make the improvement check. For the prologue, it will be at the end of the chapter, as it's short enough that you'd normally expect to just about play through it in a single session.
I'll use that as my guideline for how big a "session" should be for the rest of the game, but luck improvement rolls will always be at the end of a distinct scene.
You can never increase luck to more than 99.
