Here you can find the Quick Start rules for Call of Cthulhu: http://www.chaosium.com/article.php?story_id=87
The rules are available in PDF format in black and white or in color from links on the above page. Of particular interest are the Resistance Table in the middle (I'll explain this when it's needed) and a blank character sheet at the end. You don't need to fill the sheet out or anything, but it does list the basic levels of skills. If a character doesn't have a skill listed, you will use the basic level instead. I'll usually tell you what these levels are when I call for a roll.
We do all of our dice rolling at Invisible Castle: http://invisiblecastle.com/
This site keeps a permanent record of all rolls and allows them to be searched easily. It's very easy to use, and it's also free and does not even require registration. However, you should definitely register in order to be able to put text in the Note field so I know what you're rolling against. Registration is free as well. Follow these steps to make a roll (once you've logged onto Invisible Castle):
- Click on Roll Dice at the top left.
- Enter your character's name in the Character Name box. For ease of searching, you should spell your character's name the same way every time. If your browser supports automatic completion, typing in the first part of the name will allow you to quickly fill in the rest. You should also type "[ZA]" (don't type the quotes, though) before your character's name to keep your rolls separate from those of any character in a different game who might have the same name. For instance, to make a roll for Bo Richards, you would type "[ZA]Bo Richards" in the Character Name box (again, without the quotes).
- Make sure the proper number of rolls is selected in the Number of Rolls box. Usually this will be 1, and a 1 will be in the box to start with. If you need to make more than one of the same type of roll, you can change this number.
- In the Dice box, enter the dice that you're going to roll. Most of the time you'll be rolling percentile dice against one of your skills, a multiple of one of your stats, or your Sanity. To do this, type "1d100" in the box, which will produce a random number from 1 to 100. Sometimes you'll need to make other types of rolls for things like Sanity loss and weapon damage. In this case, you'll type whatever is appropriate into the box (4d6 for shotgun damage at close range, 1d10+1d4+2 for .44 Magnum damage, and so on).
- Put a comment in the Note box describing what you're rolling against and what the purpose of the roll is. Make sure you indicate the number you're rolling against to succeed if it's a skill roll, Sanity roll, Resistance roll, or the like. For example, Bo Richards has 61% skill in shotgun. If he's firing his shotgun at a zombie, you would enter something like "Shotgun roll (61% skill) shooting at a zombie" in the Note box after putting 1d100 in the Dice box.
- Once all of the above information has been entered, click the Roll the Dice button. This will roll the dice and show you the result, and also give you a link to the roll that you can put in to your post. Just click on the text to the right of where it says "Link" to copy it to the clipboard, then paste it into your post on this board.
- Use the following code to display the link in your post:
The link should go after the "url=" and you can put any text you like between the url tags to describe the results of your action. The link will appear like this:
Code: Select all
[url=http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/1007951/]Missed it by that much![/url]
Missed it by that much!
You can also click on the text to the right of "BBCode" and paste that in. It will put the text from the Note box in between the url tags, but you can replace that with whatever text you want. - To find all rolls for one of your characters, click on Search at the top center: http://invisiblecastle.com/search/
You can enter your character's name in the Character Name box exactly as you typed it when rolling and then click the "search" button. You can also search for a particular roll by its ID number, or look up the latest rolls.
Almost all of my rolls are also made in public, using Invisible Castle in the same way, and I post the links to the rolls in the In Character threads. This also means that I don't fudge my dice rolls, and I let them fall where they may. If someone shoots your character and the damage roll is 15, then that's what you'll take. Combat in this system is extremely lethal, and characters will die. There are often ways to avoid combat, or at least to adjust the odds in your favor, if you use some ingenuity and common sense.