Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed - Theater of the Mind

Recently, someone posted about the need for maps and miniatures for CoC. The reaction was swift and divisive. A majority of the reaction was that CoC wasn't a combat game like D&D and that you should use your imagination and Theater of the Mind. For those not familiar with Theater of the Mind, the phrase came from the days of radio plays where people gathered around a radio and listened to dramas, just like people do today, to watch television shows (I know people don't do this anymore due to streaming and personal devices). Some people did admit to using battlemats and minis or doing a quick sketch and using dice to mark locations.

Battlemat and Minis for D&D

At first, I thought the question was from a GM used to a different style of game (most people thought it was a post by a D&D GM where battlemats and minis are prevalent), so my reaction was the following:

Generally, I run the game with Theater of the Mind. Most people know what a house looks like and such, and most of the time the PCs stay together, so there's not much argument about what's going on. A lot of the newer RPGs have Zones: close, near, medium, and far. They replace the finer granularity of battlemats and you can only move from one zone to another during a PC's action. Most combats in CoC are in close/near range, so the options are either to fight, shoot, or run away.

The only time I've had to use a map was running Horror on the Orient Express (HotOE), on a train with 15+ NPCs. I had a map of the train dining car and placed all the NPCs in various booths and tables and had the PCs mingle and chat with people. It's possible with Theater of the Mind, but a lot harder.

Sometimes when Players tell me they are confused, then I will pull out a piece of scratch paper and do a quick sketch. This sometimes happens in a larger space such as a cave complex with a large number of cultists or important objects such as statues, relics, prisoners, and someone being sacrificed.

I do have battlemats and minis, but I've rarely taken them out for CoC. I have played on roll20.net and mainly used the platform for sharing handouts and die rolling, and rarely for maps and the fog of war where you can slowly reveal parts of the map, but once in a while I will use it. I've used it for The Lightless Beacon as the PCs are exploring an unfamiliar lighthouse in darkness, so it adds to the paranoia.

Another person asked how do you know what's in the room?

If they are in a bedroom, I assume the standard bedroom stuff is present. If the creature comes out of a closet and attacks, I either ask for a Luck roll (lowest result gets attacked) or I've seen other GMs just pick the PC with the lowest Luck score. At that point, the PCs generally look for an improvised weapon. If a PC asks if there's a heavy table lamp in the room, then just ask them to make a Luck roll or just say, "Yes." If for something less likely like a silver candlestick (with the PC thinking that silver would have an adverse affect), you can require a higher level of success. For something extremely unlikely like a loaded rifle on the wall, just say, "No."

Then the poster said he never played D&D and was a Player.

I'm a visual person, so I visualize most stuff like a movie, so I have a strong sense of where things are. But I know that there are tactile people, smell people, audio people, etc. So, it can be a leap for someone new to Theater of the Mind as to how it works. It takes mental training to take an empty white room and populate it.

I bring in what I know about the 1920's, the surrounding context (a diner, a club, a house, a speakeasy), memories of various period movies, and internal logic and consistency -- and visually construct the location.

If you are in a living room or den, I will assume there are sofas, chairs, end tables, a fireplace, and if so, fireplace pokers and shovels, etc. A billiard room will have a pool table, pool sticks, maybe stuffed animal heads on the wall, a rifle or crossed swords and a shield as decoration. When you want as a Player to use one of those said props, you can ask the GM if that object exists in the setting. If it does, assume you can exploit it.

If you are in a room and you want to search it for clues, you tell the GM you are tossing the room for clues and whether you can roll a Spot Hidden. Or if you just want to glance around the room and see something out of place, you can ask the GM and he might ask you to roll a Spot Hidden.

For combat, there is no facing. Just assume there's room for 2 or 3 people to dog pile an opponent unless they're unusually large, but in that case running away is the better solution. In CoC 7th, combat is now a series of blows and struggle, not a single blow, so it's less tactical. You can just say, I'll move to point blank on the bad guy and shoot him. The GM will either let you do it or say, "Oh, there's 2 body guards in the way, you can't. You see the body guards move to intercept you, what do you want to do instead?" Sometimes in a fight, someone is already engaged and you can say, "I'll move up behind the bad guy and smack him with a vase." Generally, the GM with just say, "Because the bad guy is already engaged and outnumbered, roll Fight (Grapple) with a bonus die" which matches your narration. Or in some cases, you can say, "I duck behind a support pillar or sofa for cover." Just assume that type of feature is in the room. If you really can't, the GM will tell you, "Sorry, there's nothing like that in the room or it's too far away. Do you still want to run for cover, it'll take two rounds? Or do you want to just fall prone to the ground? Or do something else?" The key is dialog between the GM and Player, so there is a meeting of the minds as to what's in the room.

So, those are my thoughts on Theater of the Mind for CoC.

Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed - Sneaking Around in Groups

Stealth as an Individual

Stealth as a Group

A common problem in Call of Cthulhu (CoC) is that sometimes a group of PCs want to sneak into a location and one PC (yeah, that one guy) has the default Stealth of 20%. Or with a large group, by the law of averages, someone would fail even if everyone had a Stealth of 70%. So, how do you handle this fairly?

When someone's Stealth check fails!

I offer a group Stealth check. The PC with the lowest Stealth rolls for the whole group. If the roll fails, the whole group isn't Stealthy. Otherwise, success. But what if several people have a low Stealth score? I give them the option of not sneaking in. They can sit out and do something else while their compatriots sneak in.

World War Cthulhu: Cold War offered another solution. They have a Tradecraft skill. If someone with Tradecraft aided others in Stealth via scouting ahead and using hand signals, they can instead roll a combined skill roll. They roll once and if the die roll is below both their Stealth and Tradecraft, the whole group would succeed.

Trail of Cthulhu (ToC) offered a Piggybacking solution. The PC with the most Stealth points to spend rolls (the Lead), but each PC piggybacking on the Stealth must spend a Stealth point and for each PC lacking in a Stealth point, the difficulty is increased by 2. ToC uses 1d6 for skill resolution, so a 2 pt penalty is pretty hefty. Typically a 4-6 is a success. Having one noisy PC increases the chance of failure by 33%. This can be offset by having the Lead spend Stealth points.

So, another solution is to have the PC with the highest Stealth roll, but add penalties based on the skill levels of the rest of the group. For example: -20% for each PC who only have the default. -10% for each PC with Stealth below 50% but above the default of 20%. -5% for each PC with Stealth above 50%. On failure, you assume someone inadvertently stepped on a twig, knocked over a vase, stepped on a creaky floorboard, or got spotted.

Individual Stealth checks

Another solution is having everyone roll Stealth and those that fail can be noticed, but those that fail are silent and well hidden. This may happen if the PCs scatter and look for various hiding places, like in a closet, under the bed, in a steamer trunk, etc. In this case, I generally ask for individual Luck rolls for those that failed and the one with the worse roll gets spotted and attacked. Sometimes for brevity's sake, the GM could just pick the one with the lowest Luck score instead.

Delta Green uses an opposed Stealth roll. So, there's a chance the bad guys won't notice you even if you have a low Stealth score.

In that spirit, some GMs roll a Spot Hidden for the bad guys, but that should have already been taken into account by the success level required. If the bad guy's Spot Hidden is < 50%, a regular success is required, <90% Hard, >=90% Extreme. And remember, when dice are rolled, it is always for something that matters and at a moment high drama. If the PCs fail a Stealth roll, something should happen.

Well, that's my thoughts on group Stealth.