Controlling player characters' senses

Today just a short tip for GMs. As you run RPG games, you probably know awkward moments like that:

GM: "Make a spot check."

Player: "I failed."

GM: "Oh... So, never mind."

I think I do not have to explain in details why it is so pathetic, but let me tell you just a few words. After this dialogue players perfectly realise that they have missed something. In D&D and other RPGs where action is on the first place, it does not matter so much, but in Call of Cthulhu, where atmosphere is everything in fact, it destroys all the GM's work. Imagine a situation when characters enter a new room and there are some evidences of the crime or a presence of a daemon which they failed to notice. After the "...never mind" presented above they know that something important has been in that room and instead of moving forward, they are going to try to re-enter the room again and try to examine it once more. How to improve it?

Be prepared to make all the checks connected with characters' senses by yourself. Note somewhere what bonuses your player characters have to spot, listen and so on. If you do, that situation is going to look completely different. Next time, when your players enter a new room, you will check their senses by yourself, and your job will be just tell them what they have noticed, and if they fail, you will just remain silent. No more awkward text during your sessions.

One important thing is not to exaggerate. I am not telling you to ban your players from making those checks at all. If you just want to check whether characters noticed a hidden enemy or not, let players do that - characters will meet the consequences two minutes after that so it does not matter, but if it is something which is to make their task easier (especially in detective stories), do not hesitate to use my tip.

We are ready for Cthulhu

Yesterday I ran Call of Cthulhu. The main theme of the scenario was a ghost ship which had disappeared few years back in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Now the ship has showed up near Boston, there is no sign of life aboard and she looks like she was eighty-years-old even if she is seven. Player Characters' task was to get aboard and reveal the mystery (as in ninety per cent of CoC scenarios, I guess). Well, I have not foreseen that my players want to prepare themselves for every possible condition (they even attended a diving course!) and in result, for few hours they have been buying equipment, searching for some information about the ship, learning new skills and so on, and when they finished, there was not much time left. I had prepared the main part of the story, i.e. the ship, to take about two hours and they have not finished the half of it, but that is even better! I can develop my story and now I can be sure that nothing similar like those preparations will repeat on the next session, so my players are going to face four hours of pure horror story!

The table just before the game.

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Now just a few words about what I am going to publish here in the nearest future: I am working on a next article over techniques which I use during sessions. It will discuss one facet of NPCs in role playing games and how to develop a side threat inside a main story. Secondly, I want to prepare the story about a ghost ship to became a ready-to-play scenario of Call of Cthulhu and put it in there. Off course I will be able to publish it online when we finish it - I am not going to give my players spoilers.