Using a mash up of THW Lovecraft's Revenge - Introduction and background

Introduction

Introduction to the variant of the Two Hour Wargames Lovecraft’s Revenge, playing solo using a spreadsheet.  Game replays, set in Queensland Australia  to follow in subsequent posts.

Background

It was 2012 and I was looking to run some solo Traveller.  I started doing this using MegaTraveller and Rory Story Cubes and even blogged the first few scenes.  I was unhappy with the amount of work it took to play and lack of a story arc so started looking at what to do.  I latched onto Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet and Covetous Poet’s Adventure Creator stuff and over the next 5 years or so developed a spreadsheet to create a story driven RPG.  In 2016 I gave it a go and did about 4 scenes but it was entirely a story generator – basically the scenes ended up entirely written based on generated keywords and phrases.  I was looking for a more RPG type experience.  I had also collected simple and solo RPG games over these years and eventually created a spreadsheet to create characters and resolve events, encounters and tasks. It was based on opposed d6 dice rolls with only a few modifiers. In 2017 I used it to run the first two scenarios of the Traveller Kinunir and it worked well but required lots of cut and pasting to do.

I had also moved on in life from using 1d6 +/- modifiers to rolling a small number of dice (usually 1 to 4) and adding or subtracting a few dice to the roll. And the dice were GoalSystem dice so 1-3 = no successes, 4-5 is one success, 6 is two successes.  I kept the opposed dice roll for tasks with only one to two modifiers.  Character creation etc is not dice based as it is a spreadsheet so can be randomly generated from tables.  Originally I was going to use it to continue to play Traveller scenarios but then started creating my own story framework.

I wrote a mashup of Chaos and Cairo and Pulp Alley and played a game in early 2017 solo with the intention of playing more with the children but that never happened.  I was intrigued with the plot plots and perils concepts as I used something similar in my RPG framework.  I got more into Pulp in general (watching films and reading books) and so looked into Larger than Life as a scenario generator but still more of a minis than game.  A good framework but not quite as flexible as I was looking for.  I was looking for a framework that I could easily change to minimise combat, preferring to have an non-combat based RPG experience.

Mid-2018 I then read a friend was playing Call of Cthulhu and while I know and had read a few of the Cthulhu Mythos stuff never really dived deeper.  So I bought some Cthulhu Mythos MegaPacks from Amazon and  also bought Lovecraft’s Revenge which had the a great framework I could easily make less combat-oriented by using stuff from my Kinunir spreadsheet.  So I continued with the spreadsheet and branched my Excel knowledge in some VBA and macros and buttons to make running the game easier.  The aim is to re-jig the spreadsheet to be able to play Pulp, and then hopefully SF and circle back to Traveller scenarios.  But for now it is Lovecraft’s Revenge.

Overview of RPG rules (working title PPS - Pulp, Pure and Simple)

This is a really quick overview - the rules have a bit more to them but this is the outline. They are currently spread out over some older documents and the spreadsheet.  One day I may get around to actually writing them up properly.

Characters

A character has 3 main attributes, each with a level of 1 to 3: Physical, Agility, Mind.

There are 18 skills in the game (e.g. Melee, Investigation), 6 skills associated with each attribute.  Characters tend to have 1-3 skills and each skill adds +2 to task rolls.

A character has a job that gives them a default skill.

Dice

Each die rolled is read a 1-3 is no successes, 4-5 is one success, 6 is two successes.  When rolling one or more dice, count the number of successes.

Tasks

Just about everything is resolved using tasks.  All tasks are opposed dice rolls where the characters roll a number of dice equal to the Attribute, +2 dice if they have the appropriate skill related to the task (if no skill just use the attribute) and maybe add or subtract some dice based on the environment (e.g. if wounded subtract a die).  if opposing another character, then that character rolls that number dice; if opposing something else, roll dice equal to difficulty level.  Add up the difference in successes and I use a variant of the Yes, Yes but, No, No but to resolve the task:

-4 or less: really bad

-3 No and

-2 No

-1 No but

0 Yes but and No but, often roll again

+1 Yes but

+2 Yes

+3 Yes and

+4 Exceptional success

In melee for example rolling a +2 would inflict a heavy wound on the opposition.

   

Complications

Complications are things that need to be overcome during the game.  There are about 100 generic complications ()e..g being followed, Trapped in cramped spaces, feeling sick) of which 40 are encounters with other characters, 30 are obstacles, 15 are state changes (suffer a wound, get emotional) and 15 increase or decrease the difficulty of the next task.  Encounters and obstacles require a task to resolve.

A complications will have one, two or three skills that may be used to resolve.  Encounters normally have random characters, obstacles also have a random difficulty.  For example,  Being Stalked/Hunted is an encounter and so need to generate an opposing character(s) and has a choice of three skills (Survival, Driver, Awareness) that could be used (choose the best one for the main character).

Complications are similar to PEFs in Two hour Wargames rules or the perils in Pulp Alley.  However of the 18 skills only two are combat and the skills are evenly distributed across encounters and obstacles so combat does not play a big part.

Challenges

Challenges are tasks that are required to complete a scene.  They and are randomly generated as to one to three skills and the difficulty.  Depending on the challenge it may be an encounter (e.g. if questioning a person, a encounter ensues.  Challenges are like the objective in Two Hour Wargames or a plot plot in Pulp Alley.

Overview of story framework

The Lovecraft's Revenge story framework is very similar to Larger than Life but as a quick summary:

Lovecraft’s revenge is based on a number of concepts:

• REP – a character has a REP value of 3 (poor), 4 (good) or 5 (excellent) that is used for resolving in game tasks.  A character may also have attributes that can modify the resolution.
• PEFs – Potential Enemy Forces.  These are resolved as either nothing or something.  The something is usually an encounter, but could be a hazard to overcome.  With an encounter, you tend to either interact (Talk the Talk) or Fight (Confrontation).
• Clues – at the beginning of the game you determine how many clues you need to complete before doing a final scene.
• Scenes – Scenes are similar to story scenes.  A scene has an objective and a number of PEFs to go through depending on the location of the scene.  The objective is completed by a challenge (usually against a person but could be solving a puzzle or finding an item).  Completing a successful challenge gives you a clue.  What I like about Lovecraft’s Revenge PEFs is that you simply are allocated a number per Scene based on the location, unlike Larger than life where the is a 3x3 grid for PEFs placement.  Much easier to run in a spreadsheet!
• Darkness Level – Higher level of darkness level increase the chance of higher level creatures and make it harder to overcome some tasks.  It starts at around 3 with a maximum of 9. At the beginning of each scene there is a chance the darkness level will increase.  It usually does.

The overall running of the game is quite simple:

• Game starts with an Opening scene where you face a number of PEFs to determine the number of clues to accomplish.
• Each scene you process a number of PEFs .  Once through the PEFs you perform a challenge and get a clue if successful.
• If you go through a certain number of scenes without getting a clue the game ends.
• If you go get the required number of clues, you go to a final scene where you confront the Big Bad and his minions.

There is a lot more in the rules themselves and there is a large section devoted to resolving a confrontation using miniatures and a battle board.

My mashup

The overall framework and game process stay the same with only these changes:

• I replace REP with attributes and skills and character generation is performed using my system. All game process that involved REP are resolved with my task system (and also doing away with the battle board resolution for combat)
• PEFs are resolved using complications and so there are less encounters and much less combat.
• The challenge is resolved as a challenge task.
• I use 12 locations rather than 6 for a bit of variety, and set the locations where I live (Brisbane).
• I modified the Who is that? encounter table to match my character job list but the creatures and deities are much the same (although Bears are not there – no bears in Oz).
• I do not bother with Fast Move, but did add a “run away” task.

I built up the spreadsheet stuff as I went and added stuff as required, or as I thought it may be required. I did not come across magic in the first game and so magic is not specifically in the spreadsheet yet.

Examples

Characters

This is a character generated by the spreadsheet.  Most things should be self-explanatory.  I added in these details after reading a lot of blogs on potential details for PCs.  Some of the extra details may not be necessary and currently mainly used to flesh out the narrative but can help steer the story.  For encounters, NPCs are randomly generated using the same system.

Name:   Tate ONEAL

Level:    Hero

Race:     Human

Physical:              3

Agility:                  3

Mind:                    2

Fortitude:            3

No. of skills:        3

Skills:     Contacts Investigation Interaction

Job:        Patroller

Sex:        Male

Age:       old (50-70)

Height:  average

Interact:              Caustic

Physical feature:              Hard of hearing

Trait:     Shows pictures of his children/relatives

Motivation:         survival

Origin:   high population slum

Problem:              Was cast out of their home community for discovering corruption among the clan/tribe leadership

Job motivation:  Idealistic about the job

Weapon:             Pistol

Armour:               none

Relationship of PC 1 to PC 2: Parent-In-law / son or daughter-in-law

States

Emotional:

Tired:

Wounded:

Sick:

Insanity:

Complication

complication	type	difficulty	type	task Physical	task Agility	task Mind
Being Stalked/Hunted	encounter	3	random	Survival	Driver	Awareness

This example has three skills associated.  Others have only one or two.

Task resolution

Skill/ NPC table	PC/NPC number	OR level	Mods	attribute	Job affinity	total d (att +skill)	diff	result
Survival	1		mods?	Physical		5	4	YES and more
NPC	1	difficulty	mods?	Physical		3	-4	No and more

Blue must be filled in, Grey is optional and one of the two green boxes must be filled - NPC if it is an encounter, difficulty is an obstacle).

Once filled in everything on the right is auto-generated.

Note that job affinity is something from my original spreadsheet where there is a +1/0/-1 between PC and NPC jobs.  I already have the table and it would not be hard to implement it back (probably about 10 minutes!).  I just am not sure if I want to put it back in.  I did affinity based on scene type, motivations etc and settled on job about a year ago but still not sure of its value.  I am not sure I need more randomisation.

Opening Scene

Who	Tate ONEAL
Start Darkness	3
Location	City
Day/Night	Night
No. Complications?	3

After resolving the complications here are the story goals:

Goal	Search for a Person
Details	Family
Clues	4
max failed clues	2

Advance Scene start

Darkness increase	1
Challenge type:	Solve a puzzle
Location	Outback
Travel Scene	No
Dream	No
Buy/Sell
Recruit	none
Day/Night	Night
No. Complications?	2