This past Sunday saw my first attempt to run a Call of Cthulhu game. I’ve run a few horror games before, but this was our first time delving into the the actual CoC system (7th edition in fact). And I’ll freely admit this is more of a test than a full on, long running campaign, just a little tale about a zombie outbreak in a tourist mecca at the height of tourist season that may or may not have been somewhat influenced by a certain REmade game that recently launched.
Seemed like as good a place to start as any to me.
Anyway, the point of this little bit of insight into our game is to talk about failure…and boy, there was a lot of it during that first game. Don’t think I’ve ever seen so many 95%+ rolls made in a single night.
The game started with a failure…in this case one of the earliest cases of internet dating (the game takes place in the mid 1990s) that resulted in a failed hookup for one of the players. This led a couple of them to hitting a bar one night, in which a third player rolled a massive failure on his performance check (part of the live music at the bar that night) and basically got booed off the stage. After the show, his truck was having trouble starting, so the 2nd player, who was an engineering student, stepped in to see if he could fix the problem. He promptly rolled a critical failure and wound up not only breaking the starter, but somehow frying some of the wiring under the hood.
And just like that, we have one of the most memorable meetups for a party we’ve ever had, all based on a series of amazing fails. I had never exactly planned how I was going to get them all in the same car, and assumed they’d wind up driving both vehicles, but this worked out so very well for the story. They were all together when they came across a body in the road, and swerved to a stop to take a look…and all at once, they were a part of something much larger and more terrifying.
But, the fails don’t stop there. Our fourth player, who arrived an hour or so later than everyone else, was playing a member of the forestry service, and happened to be on the same road, following the other players by about 20 minutes or so. He completely missed seeing the body, but the truly amazing fails came once he overheard the radio call on the radio about thirty minutes later from a local police officer. Once at the site of the body, his keen knowledge of the natural world led him to the conclusion that the body had been mauled by animals, assuming it was dogs or coyotes (in fact, it had been mauled by human zombies), and he then completely missed the fact that there were fresh tire marks on the road from the other players’ car, AND he missed the fact that the body had been moved since it had died.
Needless to say, this resulted in him having no reason at all to suspect the other players of anything relating to the incident, which led to their eventual meeting out in the woods, where they had a very tense back and forth, with the threat of a shootout between them. Queue the appearance of the zombie coyotes…
So yeah, failure is certainly always an option, and that night, it seemed to be the best options we could have hoped for. We’re all anxiously awaiting the next game night to see if their luck may improve, or if the fail train continues.
Until next time…Urban out!
