Solid Shadow impression! I like Jeff's appreciation of Vaesen. I've run it for 3 years now - about 15+ adventures from Free League, 5 from Cthulhu (no mythos), & 15 homebrew. However, our group collaboratively took the best of Vaesen's rules and ported them into "gritty hardcore-mode" D&D 5e (1/4 it points, slow healing, combat is rare) with low-magic characters (and what little magic there is has additional costs & consequences). Call of Cthulhu and Everyday Heroes were helpful for this adjustment. As a GM, I have way more choices with that system, it isn't as punitive to the players, and they have a lot more flexibility in what they can do and with their character advancement (still only level 4 after 30+ adventures).
Call of Cthulhu was my first entry into the hobby, and allthough I since have transitioned into a swedish lovecraftian game called Kutulu as my go to mystery game, CoC will always be near and dear to my heart. Also, the adventure collection Fear's Sharp Little Needles by Stygian Fox is an excellent book of scenarios that every keeper should get.
The one thing that I wish they would have done is made attribute scores matter more in CoC. If you have a high apperance score for instance. Its difficult to come with any benefits it may have, because soft skills in most cases are independent of the apperance skill. If your highly attractive, then your most likely easier to recognize which in most cases is going to be bad. The suggestion for a 50% being someone whom is a professional doesn't make much sense either. If when you went to work everday. You failed half of the time. You wouldn't be effective enough to earn respect from repeat customers, nor would you trust yourself to handle a task. 70% is more inline with a professional, and if you cannot figure it out. You would still know someone more capable at specific tasks. That you either have worked with, or know. I could devise some method to utilize multiple attribute score added together, then divided by the number of attributes. Then, divide that result by 10. This forms the base score, before applying skill points. However, as it stands it doesn't line up with the emphasis the rules make for certain skills being inherently easier to master. Which, are granted good base scores to encourage risk taking by players in critical situations. That means the divider of 10 would have to be different based on the skill. It also means using less attributes score for less complicated skills. It would require quite a bit of playtesting to rebalance.
Enjoyed the show. Solid Spooky September picks, Jeff! For me, I'd certainly add Kult, Jiangshi, Monster of the Week, Greg Saunders' Esoterica and Savage Worlds (from ETU and Rippers, thru Holler, the Weird Wars and Deadlands: there's so much excellent pulp-horror to be played with SWAdE). But then that wouldn't be five, would it?! LOL Back in the day, I really liked Don't Look Back (2e, 1995) and (as was mentioned with Buffy) all Eden Studios games. Abstract Nova also brought out a few cracking horror RPGs with Alethea, Heaven & Earth and the paranoid identity weirdness that was Exquisite Replicas. I'm currently looking forward to the physical release of DMDave's Horror (Year Zero Engine) RPG. Horror is definitely my favourite genre!
And we can't forget Pacesetter's Chill RPG from 1984. I own the Buffy TTRPG -- it's actually an excellent game if you like Buffy (which I do) -- buy hey -- I also own the Hercules/Xena TTRPG (Xena game is not great -- but totally worth it for the Xena setting material alone).
@@quantus5875 Sadly, Chill isn't a game I've ever owned or played. I remember seeing the advert for it in issue 56 of White Dwarf magazine, back in August 1984! Tough decisions had to be made, 'cause there was FASA Star Trek too, but I spent my pennies on Call of Cthulhu (second edition) instead. Buffy is a game I still have on the shelf with Conspiracy-X, All Flesh Must be Eaten and others by Eden Studios. They had an excellent game system. Such a shame they can't get on with doing some reprints. I wonder if you've ever checked out their Ghosts of Albion RPG (by Amber Benson, who was Tara in the TV series)? Same Buffy and Angel mechanics, and such a brilliant spooky RPG set in Victorian Britain, with a great concept for getting (and keeping) the party together and motivated. It's still on DTRPG with the rest of the Eden stuff. Definitely recommend checking it out (and the early 2000s web animation on the BBC archive - excellent voice acting, janky Macromedia Flash-movie!).
@@Wraithing I'm glad I have my Buffy books. Totally worth it for the setting material alone. Yes, agree really well done. I'll have to check out the Ghosts of Albion RPG, not familiar with it. Sounds very interesting. I like Victorian-age settings.
Since it's spooky season...how about RPG Horror Stories? Sessions that went wrong for the characters, one die roll dooming the entire group, in game shenanigans that got the group into hot water, etc. Always fun to hear how another group deals with scenarios - especially Call of Cthulhu's The Haunting.
Catching up on the shows I missed this week and the Gaming Gang theme song is stuck in my head. My wife is asking me what in the world I am humming. Ha. That's Robot Man not Ultra Man. Yup, truly though gloriously terrible. Good list of spookies. On Alien, the stress mechanic was crazily overbearing. Not sure that's the game or the GM, but it was a lot. Meant the game was playing us more than we were playing it. I've played a lot of Mothership and run it a few times and I way prefer it to Alien, which I have only played twice. Alien creates an expectation that doesn't exist in MS. Dead Planet for example is awesomely weird and mysterious as it unfolds. CoC and Delta Green are both top notch games.I didn't find the degrees of difficulty in CoC 7e too difficult to incorporate/get used to, but I am not into the chase mechanic. The material published for Delta Green is great. Vaesen worked best with a group really into roleplaying. I ran Dance of Dreams, the scenario from the core book, for two different groups. One was a dud, but the one with the group that went little theatre on me was a blast. I'm adding Weird Heroes of Public Access which I love, but is a bit off he beaten track. Cheers, Jeff. Take care.
I've played all those games; i would probs say Achtung Cthulhu was the most fun (love a Weird World War setting, and I like more pulpy horror); and my least favorite would be Vaesen... I've given it 3 tries with different GMs because people rave about it, but I think its a little too slanted on the narrative side for my liking (and the horror is very slow burn). Special mention to a recent Savage Worlds Deadlands game I played which also delivered on the horror pulp element
I've heard you mention a couple of times that Call of Cthulhu 7e requires two books. I haven't found that to be the case at all. The Keeper book has all the rules for character creation and plenty of options. The Investigator Handbook, from as far as I can tell, is just a splatbook of character options. When I visited Chaosium at GenCon to get 7e for the first time, they told me as much: that the Investigator Handbook is optional. While I did purchase it, I have still never used it for any of my Cthulhu games as Keeper or a player. Can you speak to why do you think it's essential? Am I missing something? Thanks - love the show.
If you're new to CofC you really should have it seeing that there are loads of details about a lot of occupations which aren't in the Keeper's Guide. When 7th edition CofC came out, it was all contained in a single volume which was then quickly split into the two books we currently have. At that point, it was implied you'd need to have both books. I think I'm still influenced by that. You are absolutely correct, you could certainly run Call of Cthulhu using only the Keeper's book. Some of the shorter, one-shot adventures which have come out for 7E could probably even be run in a pinch with just the Starter Set. ~ Jeff
I've never used nor felt the need for the Investigator's Handbook. But I think that depends on playstyles, if you are looking for a more "realistic" or "detailed" game, the IH certainly helps. Those aspects just aren't that prominent at _my_ table, but that's just how we play. Sidenote: check out Heinrich's Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation. Now there's a book players can have a blast with.
Oh! Godzilla VS Megalon, with 62% new footage. Definitely don't pay attention to it changing from night to day to night to day during the fight. Not my least favorite Godzilla film. That "honor" probably goes to All Monsters Attack. The one with the little kid being chased by Japanese Roy Orbison. So F'ing terrible. Man, I love the Alien RPG. I've had a LOT of fun playing it. I was one of those people who didn't grasp that one element of Mothership. I think I did on my first read-through, but then missed it when I was rereading it. There's a lot that I like about Mothership, but I really like Alien. I'm totally on board with you with Call of Cthulhu. That's my go-to as well. I have the original Delta Green sourcebooks from Pagan Publishing. I actually had the original editions, but sold them off to collectors & bought the POD hardcovers from DriveThru. I always figured if I was going to run it, I'd run it as a "90s Period Piece." Imagine if my players were in their 20s and really have no memory of that decade. It would be like me with the 60s & early 70s. Might as well have been a different world. I did pick up Fall of Delta Green, but somewhere along the way decided the new version just wasn't for me. Vaesen is a weird one. I'm torn. I bet I would have a blast playing it, but I don't think I'd ever run it. There are things about it that remind me of the sadder, more wistful stories from Hellboy, which I think is awesome. But otherwise, it doesn't quite click with me.
Thanks for the sub and, no, I've never done DJ or voiceover work. Funny enough, I just had someone comment on another video yesterday about how they hate my voice. ~ Jeff
So... you were asking for advice about episodes, are you intending to expand to talk about how to run these games, because most of the videos I have seen have been about "gaming news or products"? Or, I suppose you could talk about the adventures you have bought & ran that went well. (Maybe even the ones done poorly, but most YT-personalities avoid doing that.) If you wat to positively talk about the ones that went poorly I suppose you could talk about learned fixes for those that didn't go well, or how you merged a couple together to get a good adventure out of two or three less than stellar ones. (Or, if you are not the GM in the stories bring in the GMs for interviews and talk about what they did to fix the games they ran.) Feel free to use or ignore these ideas. God bless.
@@Thegaminggang maybe because I typically watch whole working I'm missing some of the content then. I guess maybe I should watch half, take a break & then start up again so I don't miss the stuff that has been blending into the background.
I no longer own VtM 5E and, if you followed the show, you'd know I don't like the 5th edition of the game; I'm not going to promote something I don't like. ~ Jeff
@@Thegaminggang Well, I may not follow the show that intensely, but I did check out your review of V5 and it didn't seem that hostile to me: "I like it but I don't think I'd run it". ruclips.net/video/Xc-kDu56Hi4/видео.html Anyway, you can like and promote what you want but as I say, any discussion of Horror RPGs that doesn't mention Vampire: The Masquerade is strange to me.
@@rory7590 There were quite a few horror RPGs that didn't get mentioned, but that's mainly due to who was in the live chat. There were only ever going to be five and, I suppose, Jeff picked five he really likes (which would make sense - not much point picking V5 to be ambivalent). The others he mentioned seemed just to be the games being talked about by viewers of the livestream. I absolutely agree, it's strange that the folks in chat didn't talk much about Vampire the Masquerade or any of the vast amounts of World of Darkness material from the last thirty-odd years. I'd say that's probably because it's not a game many of them actively play. I've played a bit (and bought a copy of V5 out of curiosity), because my friend ran loads of WoD back in the old days. Maybe, if you don't struggle with the timezone like me, you could join your voice to the 'gang' of chatting GMs and players? It's always interesting to hear what people are excited and enthusiastic about.
@@Wraithing Still odd not to have mentioned Vampire and Chill. Although I guess Chill was brought up briefly in the chat. And yes, surprised Vampire was not mentioned in the chat. If you have 5 favorites that's fine -- but you can still do honorable mentions or brief mentions. It's just that Chill and Vampire have such big historical significance in the horror TTRPG genre. Chill was easily the #2 horror TTRPG in the 1980s (and still has a cult following) and Vampire rules supreme in the 90s and is probably still played by more people that some of the TTRPGs mentioned. Will say the picks were good -- although if I would have done it I would have dropped Achtung Cthulhu and replaced it with Vampire. But totally get it that Jeff doesn't like Vampire that much.
Solid Shadow impression! I like Jeff's appreciation of Vaesen. I've run it for 3 years now - about 15+ adventures from Free League, 5 from Cthulhu (no mythos), & 15 homebrew. However, our group collaboratively took the best of Vaesen's rules and ported them into "gritty hardcore-mode" D&D 5e (1/4 it points, slow healing, combat is rare) with low-magic characters (and what little magic there is has additional costs & consequences). Call of Cthulhu and Everyday Heroes were helpful for this adjustment. As a GM, I have way more choices with that system, it isn't as punitive to the players, and they have a lot more flexibility in what they can do and with their character advancement (still only level 4 after 30+ adventures).
Call of Cthulhu was my first entry into the hobby, and allthough I since have transitioned into a swedish lovecraftian game called Kutulu as my go to mystery game, CoC will always be near and dear to my heart.
Also, the adventure collection Fear's Sharp Little Needles by Stygian Fox is an excellent book of scenarios that every keeper should get.
Two more horror RPGs:
1. Chill
2. SWADE Horror Companion (and the East Texas University/Pine Box Middle School supplements)
Yes - Chill -- namely the 1st edition from 1984 from Pacesetter!! IMO you just can't talk about horror TTRPGs without mentioning Chill.
The one thing that I wish they would have done is made attribute scores matter more in CoC. If you have a high apperance score for instance. Its difficult to come with any benefits it may have, because soft skills in most cases are independent of the apperance skill. If your highly attractive, then your most likely easier to recognize which in most cases is going to be bad.
The suggestion for a 50% being someone whom is a professional doesn't make much sense either. If when you went to work everday. You failed half of the time. You wouldn't be effective enough to earn respect from repeat customers, nor would you trust yourself to handle a task. 70% is more inline with a professional, and if you cannot figure it out. You would still know someone more capable at specific tasks. That you either have worked with, or know.
I could devise some method to utilize multiple attribute score added together, then divided by the number of attributes. Then, divide that result by 10. This forms the base score, before applying skill points. However, as it stands it doesn't line up with the emphasis the rules make for certain skills being inherently easier to master. Which, are granted good base scores to encourage risk taking by players in critical situations. That means the divider of 10 would have to be different based on the skill. It also means using less attributes score for less complicated skills. It would require quite a bit of playtesting to rebalance.
Enjoyed the show.
Solid Spooky September picks, Jeff!
For me, I'd certainly add Kult, Jiangshi, Monster of the Week, Greg Saunders' Esoterica and Savage Worlds (from ETU and Rippers, thru Holler, the Weird Wars and Deadlands: there's so much excellent pulp-horror to be played with SWAdE).
But then that wouldn't be five, would it?! LOL
Back in the day, I really liked Don't Look Back (2e, 1995) and (as was mentioned with Buffy) all Eden Studios games. Abstract Nova also brought out a few cracking horror RPGs with Alethea, Heaven & Earth and the paranoid identity weirdness that was Exquisite Replicas.
I'm currently looking forward to the physical release of DMDave's Horror (Year Zero Engine) RPG.
Horror is definitely my favourite genre!
And we can't forget Pacesetter's Chill RPG from 1984. I own the Buffy TTRPG -- it's actually an excellent game if you like Buffy (which I do) -- buy hey -- I also own the Hercules/Xena TTRPG (Xena game is not great -- but totally worth it for the Xena setting material alone).
@@quantus5875 Sadly, Chill isn't a game I've ever owned or played. I remember seeing the advert for it in issue 56 of White Dwarf magazine, back in August 1984! Tough decisions had to be made, 'cause there was FASA Star Trek too, but I spent my pennies on Call of Cthulhu (second edition) instead.
Buffy is a game I still have on the shelf with Conspiracy-X, All Flesh Must be Eaten and others by Eden Studios. They had an excellent game system. Such a shame they can't get on with doing some reprints.
I wonder if you've ever checked out their Ghosts of Albion RPG (by Amber Benson, who was Tara in the TV series)? Same Buffy and Angel mechanics, and such a brilliant spooky RPG set in Victorian Britain, with a great concept for getting (and keeping) the party together and motivated. It's still on DTRPG with the rest of the Eden stuff. Definitely recommend checking it out (and the early 2000s web animation on the BBC archive - excellent voice acting, janky Macromedia Flash-movie!).
@@Wraithing I'm glad I have my Buffy books. Totally worth it for the setting material alone. Yes, agree really well done.
I'll have to check out the Ghosts of Albion RPG, not familiar with it. Sounds very interesting. I like Victorian-age settings.
Since it's spooky season...how about RPG Horror Stories? Sessions that went wrong for the characters, one die roll dooming the entire group, in game shenanigans that got the group into hot water, etc.
Always fun to hear how another group deals with scenarios - especially Call of Cthulhu's The Haunting.
Catching up on the shows I missed this week and the Gaming Gang theme song is stuck in my head. My wife is asking me what in the world I am humming. Ha.
That's Robot Man not Ultra Man. Yup, truly though gloriously terrible.
Good list of spookies.
On Alien, the stress mechanic was crazily overbearing. Not sure that's the game or the GM, but it was a lot. Meant the game was playing us more than we were playing it. I've played a lot of Mothership and run it a few times and I way prefer it to Alien, which I have only played twice. Alien creates an expectation that doesn't exist in MS. Dead Planet for example is awesomely weird and mysterious as it unfolds.
CoC and Delta Green are both top notch games.I didn't find the degrees of difficulty in CoC 7e too difficult to incorporate/get used to, but I am not into the chase mechanic. The material published for Delta Green is great.
Vaesen worked best with a group really into roleplaying. I ran Dance of Dreams, the scenario from the core book, for two different groups. One was a dud, but the one with the group that went little theatre on me was a blast.
I'm adding Weird Heroes of Public Access which I love, but is a bit off he beaten track.
Cheers, Jeff. Take care.
I've played all those games; i would probs say Achtung Cthulhu was the most fun (love a Weird World War setting, and I like more pulpy horror); and my least favorite would be Vaesen... I've given it 3 tries with different GMs because people rave about it, but I think its a little too slanted on the narrative side for my liking (and the horror is very slow burn). Special mention to a recent Savage Worlds Deadlands game I played which also delivered on the horror pulp element
Great shout for Savage Worlds being a fantastic choice for running horror.
I've heard you mention a couple of times that Call of Cthulhu 7e requires two books. I haven't found that to be the case at all. The Keeper book has all the rules for character creation and plenty of options. The Investigator Handbook, from as far as I can tell, is just a splatbook of character options. When I visited Chaosium at GenCon to get 7e for the first time, they told me as much: that the Investigator Handbook is optional. While I did purchase it, I have still never used it for any of my Cthulhu games as Keeper or a player. Can you speak to why do you think it's essential? Am I missing something? Thanks - love the show.
If you're new to CofC you really should have it seeing that there are loads of details about a lot of occupations which aren't in the Keeper's Guide. When 7th edition CofC came out, it was all contained in a single volume which was then quickly split into the two books we currently have. At that point, it was implied you'd need to have both books. I think I'm still influenced by that.
You are absolutely correct, you could certainly run Call of Cthulhu using only the Keeper's book. Some of the shorter, one-shot adventures which have come out for 7E could probably even be run in a pinch with just the Starter Set. ~ Jeff
I've never used nor felt the need for the Investigator's Handbook. But I think that depends on playstyles, if you are looking for a more "realistic" or "detailed" game, the IH certainly helps. Those aspects just aren't that prominent at _my_ table, but that's just how we play.
Sidenote: check out Heinrich's Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation. Now there's a book players can have a blast with.
Oh! Godzilla VS Megalon, with 62% new footage. Definitely don't pay attention to it changing from night to day to night to day during the fight. Not my least favorite Godzilla film. That "honor" probably goes to All Monsters Attack. The one with the little kid being chased by Japanese Roy Orbison. So F'ing terrible.
Man, I love the Alien RPG. I've had a LOT of fun playing it. I was one of those people who didn't grasp that one element of Mothership. I think I did on my first read-through, but then missed it when I was rereading it. There's a lot that I like about Mothership, but I really like Alien.
I'm totally on board with you with Call of Cthulhu. That's my go-to as well. I have the original Delta Green sourcebooks from Pagan Publishing. I actually had the original editions, but sold them off to collectors & bought the POD hardcovers from DriveThru. I always figured if I was going to run it, I'd run it as a "90s Period Piece." Imagine if my players were in their 20s and really have no memory of that decade. It would be like me with the 60s & early 70s. Might as well have been a different world. I did pick up Fall of Delta Green, but somewhere along the way decided the new version just wasn't for me.
Vaesen is a weird one. I'm torn. I bet I would have a blast playing it, but I don't think I'd ever run it. There are things about it that remind me of the sadder, more wistful stories from Hellboy, which I think is awesome. But otherwise, it doesn't quite click with me.
Agree the undaunted games are now overpriced.
Just subbed and am enjoying your content. Wondering: have you ever been a DJ or done voice work?
Thanks for the sub and, no, I've never done DJ or voiceover work. Funny enough, I just had someone comment on another video yesterday about how they hate my voice. ~ Jeff
@@Thegaminggang lol. You def got some morning drive time cadences going. I dig it.
So... you were asking for advice about episodes, are you intending to expand to talk about how to run these games, because most of the videos I have seen have been about "gaming news or products"? Or, I suppose you could talk about the adventures you have bought & ran that went well. (Maybe even the ones done poorly, but most YT-personalities avoid doing that.) If you wat to positively talk about the ones that went poorly I suppose you could talk about learned fixes for those that didn't go well, or how you merged a couple together to get a good adventure out of two or three less than stellar ones. (Or, if you are not the GM in the stories bring in the GMs for interviews and talk about what they did to fix the games they ran.) Feel free to use or ignore these ideas. God bless.
So the first part of the show is always going to be the latest tabletop gaming news. Thanks for the topic ideas! :) ~ Jeff
@@Thegaminggang maybe because I typically watch whole working I'm missing some of the content then. I guess maybe I should watch half, take a break & then start up again so I don't miss the stuff that has been blending into the background.
There are time stamps so you can jump past the news if you'd like.
No mention of Vampire: The Masquerade in a discussion of Horror RPGs? Strange...
I no longer own VtM 5E and, if you followed the show, you'd know I don't like the 5th edition of the game; I'm not going to promote something I don't like. ~ Jeff
@@Thegaminggang Well, I may not follow the show that intensely, but I did check out your review of V5 and it didn't seem that hostile to me: "I like it but I don't think I'd run it". ruclips.net/video/Xc-kDu56Hi4/видео.html
Anyway, you can like and promote what you want but as I say, any discussion of Horror RPGs that doesn't mention Vampire: The Masquerade is strange to me.
@@rory7590 There were quite a few horror RPGs that didn't get mentioned, but that's mainly due to who was in the live chat.
There were only ever going to be five and, I suppose, Jeff picked five he really likes (which would make sense - not much point picking V5 to be ambivalent). The others he mentioned seemed just to be the games being talked about by viewers of the livestream.
I absolutely agree, it's strange that the folks in chat didn't talk much about Vampire the Masquerade or any of the vast amounts of World of Darkness material from the last thirty-odd years. I'd say that's probably because it's not a game many of them actively play. I've played a bit (and bought a copy of V5 out of curiosity), because my friend ran loads of WoD back in the old days.
Maybe, if you don't struggle with the timezone like me, you could join your voice to the 'gang' of chatting GMs and players? It's always interesting to hear what people are excited and enthusiastic about.
@@Wraithing Still odd not to have mentioned Vampire and Chill. Although I guess Chill was brought up briefly in the chat. And yes, surprised Vampire was not mentioned in the chat. If you have 5 favorites that's fine -- but you can still do honorable mentions or brief mentions. It's just that Chill and Vampire have such big historical significance in the horror TTRPG genre. Chill was easily the #2 horror TTRPG in the 1980s (and still has a cult following) and Vampire rules supreme in the 90s and is probably still played by more people that some of the TTRPGs mentioned.
Will say the picks were good -- although if I would have done it I would have dropped Achtung Cthulhu and replaced it with Vampire. But totally get it that Jeff doesn't like Vampire that much.