My gaming group played CthulhuTech for the first time on New Years. Initial Observations: Two thumbs up
For our group, I am the Shadowrun campaign GM so it was nice to be a player. Not knowing the game system and honestly a little hesitant to role-play a "Mech" game, I was a little pessimistic. I had picked up the PDF of the core rules when Catalyst was their publisher, but never really dug into it. Two of our players had been reading the rules; One of them has about every published book (I thought there was like 1 or 2, who knew there are 7? [Question is rhetorical, of course] )
We decided to just have the duo make a stack of characters and we would all choose from those pregens. Choosing characters took over an hour as we got an overview of the system and how the characters are different. Working through the first few rolls of the dice weren't too bad.... first impressions of the dice system: I really like it.
All in all, I am looking forward to our second session later this month.
Full Version: CthulhuTech
Can you give a little more input? I've seen the name a few times and thought 'hm, that's interesting', then forgot to ever look at it again. What sort of players does it seem to cater to? What sort of a game is it best for?
Not having actually made my own character, I am still coming up to speed.
Several observations:
- Any character who has any sort of magic is gimped pretty hard on points for other skills.
- Those using magic are always specialists, having only a very few skills or powers.
It is my impression that you could play either an investigation game, a full on horror game or a moderate/heavy combat game.
I really like the dice system and it appeared to function well in play. I will reserve comments on the combat system until we have played a few more games.
Several observations:
- Any character who has any sort of magic is gimped pretty hard on points for other skills.
- Those using magic are always specialists, having only a very few skills or powers.
It is my impression that you could play either an investigation game, a full on horror game or a moderate/heavy combat game.
I really like the dice system and it appeared to function well in play. I will reserve comments on the combat system until we have played a few more games.
What kind of dice system does the game use?
Ten-siders.
Skills are rank 1-5. Starting max of 3. Roll one die per rank or 1/2 a die for untrained. Take highest die or add together if multiples of 2+ dice or sequential of 3+ dice.
Attribute are 1-10. Add dice result to the base skill.
Compare result to target assigned by GM: Easy difficulty = 8; Average = 12; Challenging = 16; etc
You also get 10 "Drama Dice" that you can throw during the night, instead of edge.
During our game, these worked great. Most of us spent well over half our drama dice in the night. With a really challenging mission, I could see spending them all. The target number system worked well for us and seemed a good balance for skill checks.
Skills are rank 1-5. Starting max of 3. Roll one die per rank or 1/2 a die for untrained. Take highest die or add together if multiples of 2+ dice or sequential of 3+ dice.
Attribute are 1-10. Add dice result to the base skill.
Compare result to target assigned by GM: Easy difficulty = 8; Average = 12; Challenging = 16; etc
You also get 10 "Drama Dice" that you can throw during the night, instead of edge.
During our game, these worked great. Most of us spent well over half our drama dice in the night. With a really challenging mission, I could see spending them all. The target number system worked well for us and seemed a good balance for skill checks.
I generally like systems that take this approach, i.e. roll X dice, take only the highest, where increasing X marks better expertise.
It works pretty well, since the more dice you roll, the higher your average result is, while not changing the range of possible results.
The downside is, that after 2 or 3 dice, there are really big diminishing returns for getting higher ranks, which makes real experts a little less expertish in comparison to an average person.
The doubles, triples, etc of the highest roll are added together part might make it more appealing to get higher ranks, though.
OTOH, that sounds like it could result in some pretty random high result spikes.
Bye
Thanee
It works pretty well, since the more dice you roll, the higher your average result is, while not changing the range of possible results.
The downside is, that after 2 or 3 dice, there are really big diminishing returns for getting higher ranks, which makes real experts a little less expertish in comparison to an average person.
The doubles, triples, etc of the highest roll are added together part might make it more appealing to get higher ranks, though.
OTOH, that sounds like it could result in some pretty random high result spikes.
Bye
Thanee
The more dice you throw the better odds you have at making a challenging+. You also never have 0% to do something, though with less dice it odds are significantly higher.
I'll have to play a few more combats to see how I like the combat and damage system though.
I'll have to play a few more combats to see how I like the combat and damage system though.
I personally don't like horror genre. 
However, I did the demo spiel and played some sessions when it first came out. It's well done and very fitting for the genre.
It's three genres in one game setting, Investigation level, the combat monsters level, and the Mech level. Don't mix em.
The dice mechanics are straight forward and the Drama dice really add the element of suspense. The range boost when you get the doubles and triples affects two things, whether or not you succeed, and how well you succeed, so having able to "explode" into huge numbers has it's intended effect on combat rolls. With a high range you'll both hit, and do lots of damage, and maybe get a critical effect. And you can use your drama dice to assist someone else's roll.
Remember, it's much safer to use the government approved version of the necromonicon. (Honest!)
If you like Cthulhu or mechs, or both, I highly recommend it.
However, I did the demo spiel and played some sessions when it first came out. It's well done and very fitting for the genre.
It's three genres in one game setting, Investigation level, the combat monsters level, and the Mech level. Don't mix em.
The dice mechanics are straight forward and the Drama dice really add the element of suspense. The range boost when you get the doubles and triples affects two things, whether or not you succeed, and how well you succeed, so having able to "explode" into huge numbers has it's intended effect on combat rolls. With a high range you'll both hit, and do lots of damage, and maybe get a critical effect. And you can use your drama dice to assist someone else's roll.
Remember, it's much safer to use the government approved version of the necromonicon.
(Honest!)If you like Cthulhu or mechs, or both, I highly recommend it.
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