Tales From Behind the DM's Screen: How Call of Cthulhu made me love playing D&D all over again.

0:04 It's All About Me hey everyone uh I had actually planned on doing another video a lot sooner than this but life whatever gets in the way um some crazy things have happened nothing horrible well I mean um I had a massive fish kill happen in my uh my fish tank I lost about a dozen fish um near as I can figure uh one of the Earth eater uh cichlids that I have uh must have uncovered a pocket of um uh like bad gas that can get underneath your substrate and uh like massive explosion of like carbon dioxide and other uh bad uh chemicals um can result in that it's you know I mean I not much you can do about it you can like kind of poke through the sand a little bit and and uh you know try to like make it so those things don't build up over time and too admittedly I hadn't done that in a while so uh you know I mean it stinks but you know uh whenever you lose fish it just means that like you got room for new fish so I'm gonna let the tank kind of sit it's 125 gallon tank so it's a pretty big one and um

1:36 so I'm gonna let it sit for a little bit and hey Smalls I'm gonna let it sit for a little bit and then uh then then restock it with some other things that I wanted to do um other than that I had a sick dog a lot of sick pets but you know she seems to be on the mend now which is nice uh yeah like a bad little tummy uh bug there for a while uh and you know just busy with work and what have you um we had a gas leak at our house that was fun uh so now thankfully it's not during the winter so we had to turn off the the furnace we're gonna have to have somebody come and take a look at it but yeah lots of crazy stuff going on and um above all else I mean I've had normal fun life things going on as well and so um what I wanted to that's a lot of nothing that uh that has nothing to do with the reason why you could maybe clicked on this video so the last one I did about these um they got a good response I got a lot of people uh leaving comments and that's always nice I like reading those and I responded to every single one um and that's gonna be kind of my thing going forward if you commented any of these things that I talk about if you uh take the time to do it I will make sure I respond to it and you know not and try to not do it and say hey thanks for the comment you know I actually like try to respond in some way and it's meaningful um but what I was going to talk about today uh is it's kind of it's an art it's a role-playing game thing and I've got a

3:07 lot of role-playing game ideas in my head and of course when I pop into my head I should write them down or something but I guess I quickly forget them um but this one actually I I posted on Facebook so if you're friends with me on Facebook you might have seen me talk about this a little bit and this was kind of like uh a remembrance for me of stuff that I did in when I was young but also how it's kind of connected now with how I play gaming and and it's it's it's really interesting to me because you know for the longest time it was just I I just played Dungeons and Dragons that's what I played it's it's it's very commonly the very first role-playing game anybody ever plays it's it's what sticks with them it's what plays with them I think you know we could go on and on about why it is such a Mainstay um but I mean it has to do with um a pretty continuous core rule set that um you know no matter what Edition you you pop into um you're at a common ground with anybody else that plays there's I mean differences obviously but you're still on that same basic uh uh rule set of of you know fighter Mage lyric Thief you know with obviously you know in later editions and what have you there are variations to those um you still got those same six characteristics I guess within our third Arcana we added comeliness which was kind of stupid but you know whatever

4:39 um you know there's just a lot of stuff that uh goes on with it and um it it but it it maintains its core um regardless to the addition and I think that's the reason why uh DND is so popular or why it continues to be popular plus it's like it was the first you know like Mina I mean I've heard comments about like what isn't the first true role-playing game you know and there might be some truth to that but it was the first one that was really Mass marketed and the the people understood what it was um regardless uh I've played a lot of role-playing games however and I'm not going to try to give you an exhaustive list here um you know but I mean I've laid sci-fi I played horror I've played dramatic you know I mean you just you can figure it out I mean like shatter of course I'm gonna add let's Shadowrun um uh uh you know okay at first now I'm drawing a blank but like um Shadowrun battle Mech Warrior not battle Tech battle Tech's more of a war game Mech Warrior is the role-playing game aspect of it

5:56 um yeah I could probably just look at my bookcases over here and see what the books that are on there and I'd probably get better ideas but I guess my point is is that I've I've been around the block and I've definitely played a lot of different games um but a game that I I played a lot of uh in my uh in my teenage years uh that has since kind of vanished and and of course there's gonna be a few people in the commentary here probably they're gonna say it's not Advantage it's still out there yes it's still out there um but I think um this game uh which you know just you know not this isn't a big like reveal moment it's like paranoia uh paranoia uh I think it I think it hit stride in the area era when it came because there wasn't a lot of different role-playing games out there and paranoia was um a uh it absolutely fabulous uh uh fabulously funny game uh to play so if you've never heard of paranoia um I'm gonna give you a little bit of background about not like who published it because West End Games first started publishing it and then you know Mongoose I think Mongoose still has it now or maybe somebody else has it now but regardless um West End games uh published it West End games are also the first people I believe to publish the Star Wars uh role-playing game which was a very good D6 based role-playing game but I don't

7:27 want to get into that um I really like that Star Wars role-playing game that was a lot of fun actually uh anyway um so uh the uh the game of paranoia um is based in this dystopian future and you're thinking oh after the apocalypse dystopian Future No No No it's it's this is completely satirical and played for Laughs um the world has progressed to a point where there's all these people that are living in these Alpha complexes and an alpha complex is basically a giant domed city that um has its entire habitat uh you know it is contained um as far as uh you know the food is like growing in giant Vats um the uh everything is is electronic you know it's scrubbed clean you know it's it's well in some places anyway and um the the people that live within it are all clones um so basically there's these clone Vats that DNA and then um they they spit out a uh uh uh like a a peon of a person and that person is clone one of its clone family and then as if when the Clone uh dies um like then they activate number two

8:57 you know when number two dies is number three until you get to number six and once number six is gone it's done you you're you're you're your lifetime is over uh and it's it's not a it's it's it's not a very um I don't know what the world I'm looking for here it doesn't spend a lot of time trying to explain it uh it doesn't spend a lot of time to try to explain anything it's just the way it is and you just have to accept the fact that like and and your status within the city is based upon your the color of like the clothing you wear and so and it's all the spectrums of uh the rainbow plus um infrared which is black and UltraViolet which is white and and so they you you start off as an infrared and and off camera before you we you you um basically informed on another one of your fellow clones that got you promoted to troubleshooter status and you became red and it's just Roy G Biv it's you know red orange yellow green blue indigo violet and you you became a red level clone um and you then are now a uh uh what's called a troubleshooter which is just somebody that the computer and I haven't talked about the computer yet at all um is sent out on missions usually to

10:28 find traders to the alpha complex and here's the here's the thing everybody's a Trader because according to the um the rules of the game um like uh if you're part of a secret society that is your Trader to the computer and you um you know you you can be executed on site if you have a mutant power um then you're a traitor to the uh computer and you can be executed inside and there's all kinds of other things you can do just standard stuff that but but here's the thing when you make your character every character is part of a secret society you have to be and every character has to be in power and the thing is is that everybody has a mutant power because of the fact that like when the Clones are made there's something about the Clones that actually um like screws up and changes things and like Alters the DNA of of the Clone in general um and mutant Powers aren't like you know like uh like super strength or anything like that they're usually um completely useless uh or if they actually are useful then um you end up uh like it usually you usually end up getting found out because you fall in love with using your mutant power and then somebody sees you and then you know shoots you with a laser gun uh so this is a long I apologize for the long explanation but I'm trying to get to the fact that it's the computer so the computer is basically this all-encompassing

12:00 um artificial intelligence that controls the alpha complex and it is present everywhere all the time uh and is always watching it's always watching and but it relies but it has no real ability to affect the world so it relies on keeping these these these clones to maintain it it also maintain Society and also uh like basically um preserve uh the way of life that it wants and the the computer the programming of of the computer uh was was kind of screwed up because of the fact that it got I don't remember everything that it got caught in kind of a weird like you know one of those like Star Trek Captain Kirk you know like yo you asked the computer a couple questions get it in a continuous loop type of thing and then it screws up um same kind of thing happened with the computer so it it itself is paranoid it thinks everybody's a communist which is part of being a traitor because this is like Cold War era creation like it has like this Cold War era that's when the the game was created so it was kind of firmly rooted in Cold War communist bad capitalism good kind of thing um and the whole idea is the computer is insane and but it also controls everything and

13:33 along the way the troubleshooters have to try to figure out whatever Mission they've been sent on but also they have all these other things that they're supposed to do like their secret society wants them to do something um their their power Group whatever Power Group they're like whether they're part of the computer programming Power Group um the military power group and so on so forth they have things they want them to do so they're kind of ping-ponging back and forth now the whole point I'm telling you this is um There Are Rules within the old game the old uh paranoia game that allowed for like a campaign play but they were absolutely ridiculous and nobody that I know of actually tried to continue and play as a campaign um mostly because the game itself is very deadly uh to your to your troubleshooters and and to what they're doing uh they are uh you are going to die and you're going to die very quickly and so what we would do when we played it we played paranoia a lot um what we would do when we played it is that we would play store-bought modules Adventures or whatever and we play them as a one shot now we had tried doing one shots in with Dungeons and Dragons um like somebody bought like a module for characters levels 10 through 12 or

15:05 something like that well we didn't have characters level 10 through 12. but there were always um sample characters in the book but what we would do is we would roll up our own level 10 characters and and then we'd play these things but the problem was is that we didn't feel any kind of kinship to our character we hadn't actually progressed that character along uh to level 10. and so we didn't have a feel for them they they had like you know the the Central Casting type of backgrounds and stuff instead of like a rich and luxurious background that was created over the period of playing a certain character session after session after session um so they didn't go well GMD one shots because you just kind of you you it I mean and this is going to be a little um inflammatory uh it it kind of feels it felt like whenever I see later editions of d d being played where your character usually ends up just being the stats and the Feats and the abilities and the quirks and then like all of the little kits and what have you that your characters are part of um it they become that's your character instead of like the actual role-playing aspect of the character um I found and so that's what it was it was like our characters were how many attacks were on what magic items they

16:35 had um you know what kind of spells did they cast things like that instead of actually like character itself and so I didn't really like it it wasn't very fun so the uh the interesting thing for me was that when we played these these these games these um uh these these paranoia games it's that you we were much more flamboyant with what we did in our actions and our Insanity at the table because one if your character died who cares you get another get that next clone in you know just you know and just like however you know you the car speeds up to wherever you're the guy jumps out you know and and has all the equipment they're ready to go do she's the lasers and what have you uh and so you didn't really feel bad and then the thing about it was also is that the the party of troubleshooters themselves well they all had and we never made our own characters we used the ones that were included in the uh in in in the modules because they were set up with backgrounds that set themselves against each other uh and so it was one of those things where it was like um uh like somebody would be on already on clone two right and they'd be like oh that stinks and then they'd know that but the reason why they're on clone two is because their first clone

18:08 um was killed almost assuredly by like another clone that's in the group already and so you're swearing Revenge to get back at that person um and those things are just set up now and and the cool thing for us was that even though it wasn't like if you wanted to actually complete the mission and like find whatever the computer was trying to tell you to do or whatever um if you wanted to actually complete the mission and and do it you know murdering another clone in the party isn't going to help you uh it's gonna make it actually more difficult to to get through the process right and but we didn't logistically or analytically figure that out and say well that's stupid I'm not going to do that we would we just we just dove in and and win for it and had a blast and you know we just we and we laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and we play these games for hours and hours and and and we just and we had a blast of them and I I don't know what happened with paranoia I do remember one person in my group like actually like said they didn't like it you know because it said like oh you know it's like nobody takes it seriously everybody just starts showing up and shooting lasers at each other and stuff like that and which you know the rest of us were like well that's the whole point you know just like but it just died off for a reason and then like they stopped

19:38 making stuff for it and I still have most of my old um paranoia books and I even have the newer the newer editions as well I think there was a box set that came out in the last three four years I've never played it again though and which is sad I should play it again because I really like that I didn't really like the um it's it's a percentile dice system if we're gonna get into the mechanics of it I never really liked that uh but um yeah I mean other than that no it was good stuff uh so that kind of leads me to where I'm going with this is that like one shots like now for me um I realized after I started uh in the last year I started just I mean I'm part of a long-term DND campaign I have a very cantankerous grumpy dwarf um named Odin that that I play and I really enjoy the character uh but and I'm gonna talk about that how that works here um but for a while their DND was really boring for me I was like running games and we were having fun with them and then like I mean honestly like the weird thing is is that I I've I've dm'd and dm'd in DM games over and over again and for the longest time I couldn't remember but I still really can't remember the last campaign I run which tells you something about like how how jazzed I was about it which my players had fun but I can't remember a thing right now

21:08 I'm running a game for my son and um and his and his buddies which is uh is is an interesting evening every time we play I love it um after I'm done I like think that was fun and then I have to like recharge my batteries and then like before I and then forget exactly how insane these these five 11 year old boys are are driving me crazy and then and then then I can come back you know to like yeah let's play again that was fun you know and it's like I forget but that's another I should do the video on that um but uh so the I I kind of fell in love with the idea of running a Call of Cthulhu Adventure just because I wanted to do something different I wanted to run something and I and and I this past winter um I put one together and I had three of my friends show up and it's weird with call Cthulhu it seems like like when we play D D it's usually five players in a DM but I mean three players or and sometimes four not two but three I think is like this like DM plus three character three players is like the sweet spot four works really well too but not as well as three I think it's just because it's it's so much easier to like pivot the camera to the different points of action very easily uh with three with four you kind of get you can get a

22:40 person get lost in the shuffle I mean which is fine it's just that's neither here they're there or maybe that's also on me as the person running the game that I need to think about but um I I read up a bunch about a bunch of like plot Hooks and plot ideas for creating uh Paul clue Adventure um I read I read a forum post about like you know um just make a call Cthulhu Clue game basically which is what I did and and I ran this thing and we we played we played this thing in an evening about you know this this uh weird evil cult that hundreds of years ago had imprisoned a uh um a Colorado space uh in in a lake up in the middle of nowhere and all these people had come up there in a very clue-esque show up and have dinner and then murder mystery starts happening and then they start finding out what's going on and everybody starts going insane and and um eventually only one person managed to escape and everybody else got destroyed but I mean whatever in the Colorado space escaped from the lake and went and went back to space and but we got done and everybody had a blast and and and the thing was is that I mean we had people um being cannibals we had a serial killer character um we had a a a a a a a character uh my friend Jason um played a person that found out that

24:11 um like her parents had actually been sacrificed to the the Colorado space and so she went in into a murdering Rampage against the members of the family that were there and everybody like I said it's just like they they they basically took their characters and they just chewed the scenery and they just had a blast and they didn't care that their characters died at the end at all I mean they were just except for the one person out they escaped um but uh the serial killer escaped actually Circo character um they uh but and everybody was afterwards they're like that was amazing that was fun and and and we've played several times since then um I've played made uh another one of my own creation that went yeah not as well uh but it went I think it went pretty well uh and then there was there's there's a few others that I've run that are like actually like store-bought um scenarios and those have gone over really well too but we played it five six five times now and it's just it's fun it's just it's it's it's it's it's a way to it and and it's it's fun because I get to play it a bunch of different characters I get to tell a story um I get to like enjoy the the people um that are playing it uh enjoy the story as well and they get to dive into it um but what I probably what I realized in the last week or two is that um it actually made me really really enjoy the ID again and not because I'm cleansing my palette

25:43 with something brand new or anything like that which would be what I think it was what I realized was my dwarf fighter in this campaign I I came up with this I'm not going to go too deep into the the campaign story but um basically Empire um has crumbled and uh there are the Empire had controlled everything and they had actually like um made a great many of the dwarf clans of subservient to them and my character is the last remaining uh dwarf of his clan because his clan refused to bend the knee and they were obliterated by the empire and so he basically hates the Empire and he um he's he's he has struck out on his own to try to basically reforge his clan and anytime he runs into anything that has any kind of Vestige of the Empire he either like he tries to either destroy it um he doesn't just outright murder like somebody who's wearing it like still wearing an Empire cloak or anything like that but he'll pick a fight and and then if if you can get the fight started then of course he's got to defend himself that sort of thing and he doesn't really um he doesn't really like humans he doesn't really like Metro people he's kind of a standard dwarf but what I've discovered is that I started adding little tiny

27:15 quirks to Odin um his begrudging uh uh respect and love for the party members uh like rarely shines through but when it does it just it actually like takes everybody aside like when we there was an NPC uh Thief that was a part of the party um and just so you know we play our own Homebrew version of the game but which is basically kind of an old school game but uh he this guy this thief named Reagan and um and he he constantly just was derisive to the thief because he's human and because he shot him with an arrow once by accident and when the thief was killed by an evil sorceress with a fireball um he uh like Odin uh uh took out his dagger and and like at his funeral he cut his cut his palm and he and he and he said you know it's just like I swear on my blood and the clan Forge hammer that I will not rest until Reagan's death is Avenged and um and it was like it was a moment it was it was a fun little moment and uh and now like he is now my dwarf is consumed and this is that everybody's like what you know and and like we got a new Thief I was like you've got big shoes to fill or you have big boots to fill Reagan was

28:47 the best of us you know and everything he's just like they they know that like Odin was always just like bragging actually you know Odin that's another Quirk Odin never refers to anybody by their name he's like Thief get over here and do this yo elf what are you doing you know just like he's but but he's also like the first person when nobody's looking he's he goes to like um these poor farmers and he gives them hundreds of gold you know like basically uh you know so they can you know rebuild their Farm after it's been a bit obliterated by trolls and things like that so but he doesn't want anybody to know that because he'd be embarrassed but the point is is that I'm having a lot of fun with this character and um he uh uh and his his hatred for human society and and and and what have you is is is a constant state of friction for the players the players are trying to get stuff done and they just they they actually like role play it on it's like we got to make sure Odin isn't around when we go talk to the mayor you know so they come up with some excuse uh for me to like go up and there was a really funny moment where um uh the um they were gonna like uh uh after after like basically my obstinate nature uh cost us a uh uh our own home in the city we're in um everybody was just like okay we just gotta make sure we gotta wait until later when Odin goes to sleep and then like the the elf

30:18 um the sorcerer who's got a you know High Charisma he's like I'll go back and I'll smooth things over with the mayor and um and so I don't know how it happened but somehow uh I got wind of it and so late at night when he had like set up a meeting to meet with the mayor and he was walking over to the mayor's house and he's got a lantern he got to the mayor's house and and and and and Odin was just uh sitting at the porch you know with his pipe whittling away and it's like going for a walk Elf oh oh no how are you yeah and it's so and everybody like it's one of those things where it's like I'm actually playing the character to a detriment to the party which remember go back to my parent what I was talking about paranoia and talking about they call it clue Adventures like and then the other players have started building on that as well like not playing DND as a prospect of I need to get a thousand more experience points to gain a level so I can get more spells I get more things people are like playing their characters of as the as a real like person does that make sense like a real a real a real uh uh somebody that was actually that would actually like exist instead of just like a character on a sheet and and we had gotten to a point where we were doing that I mean we weren't really like role playing on our characters we weren't really trying to make them uh be anything more than the

31:50 character that was on the sheet and we're having more fun in my opinion uh in the towns uh running into like NPCs on the road things like that then having those discussions then we then we are actually like diving into the caves and killing trolls and I found that like I basically just can't wait until the next time we play at DND because I'm so excited to just play Odin and not just to play Odin to roll some dice and see what happens I'm like I mean like playing Odin and and putting on his skin so to speak how how color Cthulhu is that uh and and and diving in uh and doing it again and um yeah I mean so if you found I guess my whole point of this is is that if you found yourself like like d d growing stale for you or where your role-playing games going still for you try running a few one shots and I'm not and and and and and try just Cutting Loose and it can sometimes be very difficult to um you know be the Oddball at the table like talking in a weird accent or or um you know acting weird or whatever and and don't fall into the Trap of saying well my character would do this because they think this don't say that just play the character play the character and and and and and and embody it don't justify it just play it and and and and

33:21 and yeah I've said this more don't play it like uh oh I'm gonna just see all from the rest of the party I'm just gonna do this that and the other thing no no no I mean you can cause some friction but don't cause a break right don't don't cause so much friction that you finally just shattered what's going on but cause some friction cause the situation to actually like have a little bit of interpret inter-party conflict because there's a difference of going on and and a in a process and and I think um you'll have a lot of fun at least I am so there you go tell me what your experiences with playing one shots um tell me your experiences about you know playing a character playing a deep playing a like a character that you like are really deeply involved in um and and want to experience and and just enjoy that character and see that person's story you know come to her fruition type thing um tell me about that tell me about that Journey tell me about tell me what the games you're playing right now um yeah there you go um thank you all for watching this thanks for watching I I I hope to do one of these a week uh well I had to say that and right now um I'm gonna be like out of town for like the next couple weeks because I gotta go out of town to go to a wedding and then I gotta go um to Columbus for Origins uh so if you're gonna be at Origins and you want to stop by the booth say hi you can find me there um but yeah once I can get back into a schedule like doing this um I plan on doing so until next time uh

34:51 be the best version of you that you possibly can be uh and just take care all right talk to you later bye-bye