Cosmic Horror SRD: Design Part II

Today I've been working on skills for the Cosmic Horror SRD.  I think the Call of Cthulhu d20 skill system - pulled from the D&D 3.0 SRD (I think) - is needlessly complex. I'm a fan of the Pathfinder skill system, which works great in Pathfinder, but I was concerned about how the changes would affect the Cosmic Horror SRD.

(D&D gives skill ranks equal to (X+INT)*4 at first level and X+INT at subsequent levels; class skills cost 1 rank per +1, non-class skill cost 2 ranks per +1; max ranks in a class skill is character level + 3, half that for a non-class skill.  Pathfinder gives X+INT ranks per level; max ranks in any skill is equal to character level; class skills with at least 1 rank get a +3 bonus.  In both cases, X is a variable number based on class; in Call of Cthulhu d20, X = 8.)

So, I did a little experiment.  I created a 1st level defensive option character with 13 in all abilities and the archaeologist profession using the Call of Cthulhu d20 rules, and a 1st level Defensive Investigator character with 13 in all abilities and the archaeologist occupation using the Cosmic Horror SRD and the Pathfinder skill system.  I then compared the two characters.

The Call of Cthulhu d20 character wound up with 36 skill points (8 base plus 1 for INT times 4).  Twelve skills from the archaeologist profession are class skills, so with a little basic division I put 3 ranks into each of the twelve class skills and no ranks into any non-class skills.  The character wound up with a +4 total in each of the skills.

The Cosmic Horror SRD character wound up with 9 skill points (8 base plus 1 for INT).  The same twelve skills from the archaeologist occupation were considered class skills.  I could not put a rank into all twelve skills with only 9 ranks and I could only put 1 rank into any given skill... so only 9 of the twelve skills were given a rank.  However, each of those 9 skills wound up with a total of +5 (+1 for 1 rank, +1 for INT, +3 for class skill bonus).

While I'd need many, many more test-case scenarios to scientifically back this up, I think I'm comfortable assuming that if I go with the D&D system in the Cosmic Horror SRD the characters will have more skills starting out at lower total bonuses than if I went with the Pathfinder system, where they'll have fewer skills with higher total bonuses.  So I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with the Pathfinder system; if I need to, I can balance out the number of skills by increasing the ranks allotted (say to 9 or 10) and the overall total bonus by dropping the class bonus (say to a +2 instead of a +3).

Cosmic Horror SRD: Design Part I

So here I am, not even a week into working on the Cosmic Horror SRD, and I'm having to make design decisions.  Heh.

First up are classes.  In Call of Cthulhu d20 there are no classes.  There are levels and an offense option and a defense option.  I don't know if I can re-word that in such a way as to not cause copyright issues, so - taking a hint from d20 Modern - I'm going with a different approach: an offensive class ("The Offensive Investigator") and a defensive class ("The Defensive Investigator").  While the classes will have different class- and level-dependent tables, the values will be the same for all but base save and attack bonuses.

So... where you'd have a 1st level character with the defensive option in Call of Cthulhu d20, you'll have a 1st level Defensive Investigator character in the Cosmic Horror SRD.

Next up are skills.  First off, since I'm not willing to test the public domain-ness of the word "Cthulhu", there will be no Cthulhu Mythos skill.  Instead, there will be a Cosmic Mythos skill.  Above and beyond that, I'm working on testing the end result of the Dungeons & Dragons / D20 Modern skill approach versus the Pathfinder skill approach.

In Call of Cthulhu d20, a character receives (8 + INT bonus) * 4 skill ranks at first level, and 8 + INT bonus skill ranks at each level thereafter.  Skills cost 1 rank per +1 for "in profession" skills and 2 ranks per +1 for "out of profession" skills.  The maximum ranks you can put into "in profession" skills is equal to your level plus 3, and half that for "out of profession" skills.

Using the Pathfinder skill approach, a character would receive 8 + INT bonus skill ranks at each level. Skills cost 1 rank per +1, regardless of if they're "in profession" or not, however, "in profession" skills receive a +3 bonus.  The maximum ranks you can put into any skill is equal to your level.

I vastly prefer the Pathfinder approach as it's much more elegant and easy to work with. I'm concerned, however, that characters will wind up less skilled than they would if I used the Dungeons & Dragons / D20 Modern approach.  So over the next couple of days I'm going to create the same character using both approaches and see how they compare.  I'll post the results here, just in case anyone is interested.

Cosmic Horror SRD: Introduction

While I love Dungeons & Dragons and have been playing it for as long as I can remember, the game which truly captures my imagination is Call of Cthulhu. It's probably because I'm a bigger H.P. Lovecraft fan than I am a Tolkien/Moorcock/Donaldson/Weis & Hickman/Leiber/other fantasy author fan.  So when Wizards of the Coast struck up a licensing agreement with Chaosium and published Call of Cthulhu for d20, I was positively tickled.

Of course the license had a time limit and when it expired, Call of Cthulhu d20 seemed to all but completely disappear.  However, it remains one of my favorite d20 system implementations... if not my actual favorite.  Because Wizards of the Coast owns the d20 system and its trademarks, and because Call of Cthulhu d20 was a licensed property, the game wasn't actually released under the Open Game License even though at least 90% of the mechanics had already been released under that license elsewhere. Additional mechanics and monsters have been released under the Open Game License since Call of Cthulhu d20 went out-of-print.

So I've decided to create a "retro-clone" (more like a "modern-clone") of Call of Cthulhu d20 using the vast amount of open gaming content available today.  I'm calling it The Cosmic Horror SRD, and will have it all freely available online not only when I'm done but as I work through the development process.  My hope is that through The Cosmic Horror SRD people will remember that BRP is not the only system under which one can play a cosmic horror RPG and that the d20 system is as good of a contender as is any other system.

I'm starting off using both the d20 modern SRD and the d20 3.5 SRD as my main sources, although I know I'm going to have to reach into other SRDs and products for the sanity mechanics, monsters, and magic.  I'll be contributing my own Mythos constructs to the SRD as well, so watch out.

I'll keep this blog updated as I develop The Cosmic Horror SRD.