Took the plunge

[finarvyn]

Based on some of the discussion here I decided to give "Age of Cthulhu" a shot. I picked Death in Luxor since Harley seems to be a top-notch writer.

Reading through the module, I can see why you guys rave about this series. It does seem to have a lot more life in it than most CoC modules I've seen, and it looks like it runs fast. Seems like the plot moves along instead of having investigators stumble around in confusion, which somehow is the result of most CoC modules I've tried so far.

When my current 4E game is done maybe I'll bump this to the top of the list. The group likes Cthulhu and it'll give me an excuse to dig out my Cthulhu dice sets as well...

ONE MORE THING:

If I wanted to run it using OD&D/C&C rules instead of CoC, do you think it would work?

I was thinking of having players run low level (nothing above 3rd) non-spellcasting characters and am trying to decide if the conversion is too much trouble or not.

The main stats are similar to those of OD&D/C&C and the hit point totals don't seem too far out of line as long as they're low level...

[goodmangames]

Glad you picked it up! Very interesting idea on running it using OD&D rules. The first thing that occurs to me, though, is Sanity checks. There aren't a lot of them in Death in Luxor to begin with a (a legitimate callout from some of the reviewers), but as you get further into the Age of Cthulhu series they do crop up more frequently. How would you handle those in OD&D?

[finarvyn]

Perhaps a Wisdom check instead?

Wisdom is kind of like Sanity in a way, and I find that there aren't enough uses for Wisdom in OD&D so giving another wouldn't break the system.

Or define Sanity as an average of INT and WIS. Just brainstorming out loud...

[Rick Maffei]

You may wish to check out the original (1990?) Ravenloft campaign setting rules, if you can get your hands on a copy. They contained rules for horror checks and such that were made to work with 2e and could prove useful.

[finarvyn]

Good catch, Rick! I have a copy of the original Ravenloft boxed set on my bookshelf (along with Ravenloft modules I and II) and had totally forgotten they have those checks.

Heck, Jim Ward's Tainted Lands for C&C probably has some nifty rules for this as well.

[Rick Maffei]

I just noticed that Kobold Quarterly #11 has an article that deals with sanity losses in fantasy RPGs.