{"id":6804,"date":"2020-08-03T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-03T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6804"},"modified":"2020-07-25T12:49:44","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T16:49:44","slug":"cthulhu-forgotten-duty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6804","title":{"rendered":"(Cthulhu) Forgotten Duty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Paul Baldowski\nJust Crunch Games\nThe Cthulhu Hack<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
A visit to the University of Navarra\u2014located in Pamplona, Spain\u2014in search of a rare book\u2014the chronicles of a monk who claimed to have witnessed visions of other worlds\u2014leads to a grim investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 35 page adventure uses about eighteen pages to describe some skill rolls, err, I mean, \u201cinvestigation\u201d and a small manor home. It\u2019s a special kind of mess, wherein it is absolutely clear in the way it puts good text in the wrong places. It\u2019s like someone did an Excel pivot table on the adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After D&D, CoC (pronounced \u2018Cock.\u2019 You will now never unsee that & You\u2019re Welcome!)  is my second most played game. I know the score, you hit the local newspaper office, the library, and keep ten gallons of gas in the back of your pinto. I assume The Cthulhu Hack is much the same. But I don\u2019t know, so, take that as it is given.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019re in town looking for a book at a museum. They loaned it to some count dude up on the hill. Turns out he\u2019s been \u201calive\u201d for 2000 years and is going to use the book to complete his ritual in two days time. Who coulda figured?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, like, EVERYONE in Pamplona is mind-controlled by the insect inside the dude. Ok, not everyone, but, ANYTHING that needs explained in the adventure is explained by \u201cblah blah blah insect mind controlled them to get it to happen blah blah blah.\u201d Including the dude at the museum who tells you the count has the book? Why does the mind-controlled dude tell you this? Why, the count likes to lure people to him, of course! Ug! This smacks of the \u201cI cast two dozen wishes to make the dungeon immune to your passwall spells!\u201d sort of thing. There\u2019s a combination of Deus Ex and nonsense throw-away explanation that makes the whole thing VERY eye-rolly., It\u2019s a pretty low-effort explanation on the designers part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The investigation part is first up in every Cthulhu adventure, followed by the sneaking in, followed up the Fucking Up And Body Count portion. The investigation here is both poor and MAY be influenced by the system, The Cthulhu Hack, which I know nothing bout. This is where the first of those Pivot Table things comes in to play. The information is organized by \u201cSKILL CHECK TYPE\u201d in bold, followed by the information, which may have the source of the information buried in it. A false example might be \u201cLIBRARY USE: You find an article at the newspaper office about the count.\u201d This IMPLIES that what matters is making the skill check. That the player will say \u201cI want to use Library Use to find out some information about the adventure.\u201d This smacks of the 4e Skill Challenge nonsense. That ain\u2019t the way I rodeo. You can rodeo any way you want, but I\u2019m gonna tell everyone else that your way SUX. You go to the fucking newspaper office and talk to the dude behind the desk and get access to the michofiche\/archives and THEN you roll your fucking skill check. You fucking roleplay. So, either, A) The Cthulhu Hack don\u2019t do that and you just roll the fucking dice until you succeed or B) The Cthulhu Hack don\u2019t do that but this designer does that with their games. Which suck. Or C) The designer plays the game the right way but really fucked up in how they wrote down each and every one of the skill checks. Normally, I\u2019d say it was C) that happened, but, again, I don\u2019t know Cthulhu Hack. In any event, this weird fucking way or relating information through skill checks is what is always used. And it sux. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It does the SAME FUCKING THING with the NPC\u2019s and the locations. AT one point you find an abandoned car. It tells you that the partially melted keys for the car are in the fire pit, a different location. But the fire pit don\u2019t tell you that. Or Some locked chest freezer in the basement that tells you the keys are up in the office, but the office doesn\u2019t mention the fucking keys. What the fuck kind of organization is that? Some kind of system where you have to look through EVERY FUCKING PAGE of the adventure in order to determine what is in a room? Is there an NPC in the room? I don\u2019t know, I had better go check the NPC section and read through each of their descriptions to figure out if they hang out in Office \u2026 and all of the locations to see if there is anything else in the office important. It\u2019s Nucking Futz! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, a dumb Deus Ex kind of plot and an organization THAT FUCKING DEFIES LOGIC \u2026 along with a dubious method of investigating via skill checks. NPC\u2019s and events just kind of tossed out there without much more than a single sentence of support from the text. But, I mean, otherwise it\u2019s perfectly legible. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $4.50 at DriveThru. There\u2019s no preview, SUCK IT SUCKER! Bwa hahahahaha! I\u2019ve got your $5 now! Man, put in a fucking preview next time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/320893\/The-Cthulhu-Hack-Forgotten-Duty?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Paul Baldowski Just Crunch Games The Cthulhu Hack A visit to the University of Navarra\u2014located in Pamplona, Spain\u2014in search of a rare book\u2014the chronicles of a monk who claimed to have witnessed visions of other worlds\u2014leads to a grim … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/fordut.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6805,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6804\/revisions\/6805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}