[OSSR]The Golden Dawn (Call of Cthulhu)

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[OSSR]The Golden Dawn (Call of Cthulhu)

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I still can't get back into Space Madness! I've got too much to do, so...OSSR!

The basics...this book is labeled as "A Sourcebook of Victorian Occult Intrigue for Call of Cthulhu(TM) from Pagan Publishing." Pagan Pub was a third-party publisher...very much the normal CoC equivalent to the Delta Green guys, it was fans that were so dedicated to the game that they started producing material which was actually better than what Chaosium was able or willing to produce, and they asked and were granted permission to basically produce products which were...as close to canon third-party products as you can get. Seriously, these are so much better produced books than anything Chaosium was shitting out in their certified fanfiction line of Miskatonic Monographs and shit...hell, it's better than official turdblossoms like Secrets of Japan...

...and it contains maybe the best effort at a magic system for CoC intended to allow PCs to be wizards. So it has that going for it. I won't say it's perfect, because it's designed to plug into the CoC system, but it can plug into the CoC system, so it's...something?

Couple things before we get started.

The cover, you might have noticed, have a bunch of knights in full plate armor fighting bloodily. You might wonder what the fuck that has to do with "Victorian occult intrigue" and in all honesty that is a very good question. The fact is that one of the scenarios buried in the back of the book (it's a CoC product, of fucking course it has scenarios) has to do with the Holy (?) Grail, hence the cover. I guess so they didn't slap a generic London by Gaslight cover on it.

Second, one of the editors is "Alan Smithee." This is a well-known pseudonym used by directors that don't want their actual name on a film. I've heard it was an in-joke, I've heard there were creative differences...I don't know the why. It's just there. A mystery.

Three: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was an actual occult organization. Back in the mid-late 1800s, Freemasonry was expanding and getting exotic; any lodge that was getting too far removed from the basics was deemed irregular and their members were not accepted by other lodges. In a more class-centric society where joining such societies was an important means of networking, this led to some really weird shit. It was also the dawn of a great awakening in spirituality, the time of Theosophy and table-rapping and the bare beginnings of "psychical research." A few Freemasons with interest in medieval occultism got together and conceived an organization which embodied how they wanted ceremonial magic to be...taking the basic organization of graded initiation from Freemasonry and marrying it to the medieval occultism they had been studying.

People bought it. It was popular, and influential. Aleister Crowley was a member, as was Dion Fortune, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, and a bunch of other writers you may or may not have heard of. Bits of Golden Dawn lore found their way into Wicca when Gerald Gardner founded it in the 1940s/50s, and the Black and White Lodges in Twin Peaks ultimately trace back to the Golden Dawn. When Shadowrun created Hermetic Mages in its first edition, the archetype for those guys - and for initiation in general - was based on the system of ceremonial magic created by the Golden Dawn.

So the idea of introducing the Golden Dawn to Call of Cthulhu has legs. Indeed, it's sortof been tried repeatedly. I mentioned that the Miskatonic University book had an "Option: Hermetic Magic" - that is a pale, flickering shadow of the basic conceit of this book. Too, in the Shadows of Yog-Sothoth campaign, the company created a Mythos-based expy called The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight - completely different stats, and ultimately they wanted to invite Nyarlathotep into the world to eat our brains or something, but that was an idea with enough legs to make into a fairly major faction of Arkham Horror.

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And really, that's the sort of thing that in a properly-designed Call of Cthulhu RPG you should want. If occult organizations exist in the 1890s, it might be better from a simulationist angle for them to all be kooks and deluded incompetents and conmen, but it works much better if behind those assholes are a group that knows "real magic" - and behind those assholes are a group that knows "real magic" is just simplified hypergeometry funneling forces from alien dimensions. You want the onion-skin, and you want to be able to play CoC games at different levels.

So that's the kind of thing we're going to talk about.
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Post by Ancient History »

Introduction
By Alan Smithee.

Unlike other companies, when Pagan Publishing writes an introduction, it's actually a sort of guide to the contents of the book, like you might expect to find in an academic text. "Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em" as we used to say.

The book is divvied up into three sections. Resources contains, basically, all of the actual game material you would expect in a normal Call of Cthulhu book - background, stats, etc. It's 55 pages sub-divided into 12 sections, or about 6-8 pages each. This is followed by Scenarios with (surprise!) four scenarios, each about 15-20 pages long, and then the last 30-odd pages of the book are Appendices, including the dreaded Appendix F: Miscellany.

Appendix F is not even the last appendix. Gird your loins, for sanity dips ever lower...
In summary, we offer a book of magic, myth, and mystery. We have described a magical society and depicted it within the sprawling metropolis that was Victorian London. We think you'll find a good deal of terror and suspense, intrigue and horror, and not a little wonder and grue.
I'll try to cover a couple sections at a time, but no promises.

Victorian London
This material originally appeared in Cthulhu by Gaslight from Chaosium, Inc., but as that book is currently out of print we have received permission to reprint it here for your reference.
Arguably, this is the chapter you're most likely to skip. Call of Cthulhu's default setting is the 1920s in Lovecraft Country, the 1890s setting centered on London was the next natural iteration...and there have been many takes on it. So many takes on it. From Green and Pleasant Land to the London Boxed Set and Book of the Smoke. More information has been published about London in CoC than has been published about Arkham. I'm not even fucking joking. People reprint street maps and catalogs and give stats to obscure British firearms. This seven-page section includes two floor maps of the British Museum and a double-page spread for downtown street map impossible to read the names of major roads without a magnifying glass.

It's a nice touch. It was probably free, which helped. Did they need it? Eh. Like I said, there are better resources out there for London. And you do sort of need London. It's where the Golden Dawn was headquartered, and there are some great occult resources in the city, like the British Library and British Museum, the Theosophical Society and Society for Psychical Research, Grand Lodges of the Freemasons, etc. etc. 3 pages of text just doesn't do it justice, which is why they spend most of it pointing to where you can find more information.

Call of Cthulhu & The Golden Dawn
This is by John Tynes, who is rather well-regarded by many within CoC circles for good concepts. It's basically a secondary introduction, but instead of focuses on the what of the contents, he's focusing on the why of the contents - as in, why the Golden Dawn ("as a narrative structure for playing Call of Cthulhu adventures in a Victorian era"), how much of the Golden Dawn rituals and minutiae they get into (little; you can read that crap for yourselves, this is a game), how many liberties they took with the material (less than you'd think), and what's left when you decided Aleister Crowley doesn't have a copy of the Necronomicon ("Happily, lots.")

That's good for about two pages. Or really, a page and a quarter, if you ditched the massive header and quarter-page illustration of a burnt corpse with the tagline "This never happened to the real Golden Dawn."

A Keeper's History of the Golden Dawn
by Garrie Hall

This is the full, unbiased history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn...as it is in Call of Cthulhu, based on real life. An abbreviated version without the bits the PCs aren't supposed to know appears in Appendix B, presumably as a handout.

Nominally, a lot of this 9 1/2 pages is wikipedia bait. But it's the kind of wiki-bait you'd usually expect, and unlike wikipedia it cuts to the quick sometimes and expands when things get interesting on others. I don't even want to hit the highlights - you can all go read wikipedia - but this is worth highlighting:
Westcott's Golden Dawn was less of a temple and more of a university of the occult. It operated a degree system not dissimilar to that of Freemasonry, however, the Golden Dawn admitted women as well as men. All initiates were to undertake a rigorous curriculum of occult theory and a series of exams in order to progress through the initial grades.
Add to this oddly quasi-academic environment all the politicking and who's-fucking-whom of your typical anime club and Elk's Lodge, and you have the general viewpoint of the rise and fall of the order. It was a club for the serious study of magic (which didn't work), founded on ancient teachings (that three dudes made up then lied about), involving a sequence of initiations that drew you deeper into the mysteries (where they make up more stuff), and the topmost Secret Chiefs were supposed to live on the astral plane (you can see where Scientology gets some inspiration from, right?) Everyone took on a magical motto when they were initiated, which became their name within the order - usually a weird bit of Latin, but occasionally Gaelic or something.

There are no Secret Chiefs, there never were (at least, not in this product). Aleister Crowley was a bastard. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. And the system that they created would go on to be incredibly influential.

Now imagine of some of the magic actually worked. Game on.
IN 1888 a Neophyte could expect to be charged 10s for the privilege and charged an annual fee of 2s 6d. His ceremonial sash would also cost 2s 6d, and a copy of the 0=0 ritual cost 5s. He could also purchase a copy of the Order's history for 2s. The ritual itself had Egyptian overtones and culminated in a pledge of secrecy and obedience at the risk of being struck down by a "Current of Will" from the Secret Chiefs. This effect was described as leaving its target "as if blasted by a lightning flash."
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Studies in elemental occult symbolism (alchemical and astrological), the Hebrew alphabet, the Cabalistic Tree of Life, the Tarot and geomancy ran through all of the Outer Order grades. The only practical magic taught was how to create a protective pentagram, which came as part of the Neophyte grade.
We'll get to that.

This section is followed by a timeline (also by Hall), which runs from the Golden Dawn's founding through the beginning of WWI. We'll pick it up here later.
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Post by Shrapnel »

I still can't get back into Space Madness! I've got too much to do, so...OSSR!
Maybe you should follow this advice: buy a cabin, maybe in the woods, maybe in Delaware, somewhere isolated and with no people. Sell your vehicular means of transportation, burn your cell phone, adopt two cats - or an opabinia - for company, cut off your internet connection, play only Bert I. Gordon films in the background, and WRITEWRITEWRITEWRITEwrite until you can taste purple.
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Post by Ancient History »

Important Members
Names, initiate rank and secret name, backstory, and pros/cons of being allies/enemies of various big noises in the Golden Dawn. Notably lacking: full statlines. Not that most of these are historical personages you'd fap to, but includes William Butler Yeats, Aleister Crowley, and A. E. Waite. It's not a bad section to have, but the lack of statlines is annoying for what should basically be an NPC roster.

Meetings & Meeting-Places
Another Alan Smithee joint. Overview of various Golden Dawn temples, which are like Masonic lodges only moreso, and you get a breakdown of the anime club hierarchy for each temple.

The Library & the Cypher
Also by Alan Smithee, but more important from a game-mechanical point of view. This is a Big List of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's library of occult tomes...and I suppose I should talk about that in a little more depth.

Most folks reading this will be familiar with the idea of Mythos Tomes. You read and study them, lost a random amount of Sanity, and gain a certain number of percentiles in your Cthulhu Mythos skill.

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If you can read it.

Occult grimoires work about the same, except mostly no Sanity loss and they give you Occult percentiles instead of Cthulhu Mythos, and generally have no spells (although there are exceptions to all of the above). This is a fair tradeoff because normally in the game the Occult skill is almost useless, but if you are playing under one of the optional rules where you can use the Occult skill to cast spells, it gets interesting.

So the Golden Dawn library is a bunch of books you can pick up and study; all the entries are abridged stats from CoC 5.5, so they don't give you how many weeks of study you need or anything like that, just the ultimate Occult +% rating and some fluff. They are all, also, real books known to have been used by the Golden Dawn. Which makes me think that in the simulationist/game playability divide, Smithee came down hard on the simulationist side, which might explain hard break with the other game developers. Aside from that, these are downtime window-dressing for the most part, since they contain no spells, and Smithee explains:
Besides this, none of the books listed below offer any spells or rituals. Given that these books are meant to be readily available to Inner Order investigators (and possibly Outer Order ones, by request), placing spells within them seems unwise since they could be used as a way to circumvent the process of gaining and spending character points.
That's a bit putting the cart before the horse, since that exact system is discussed in the very next section, and is the reason we're talking about this book at all, and it's worth noting that this attitude toward occult grimoires isn't really reflected in other products (which, where Hermetic/occult magic is accepted, they have no problem loading them up with spells), and the books themselves, which sometimes do include spells, charms, incantations, rituals, magical procedures, etc. But the CoC tome system is not a good one for accurately reproducing or summarizing the content of actual books.

Also worth mentioning: "Occult" is a very broad term, and covers a lot of sins. It doesn't cover magical paradigms per se - all of the Occult Grimoires listed here have to do with "Hermetic magick" which is a combination of the Western grimoire tradition, medieval Kabbalah, alchemy (spiritual and practical), reconstructed or translated ancient Egyptian "magic", Theosophy, and the tarot. Not included? Anything from cultures more "foreign" to Western paradigms. But there are books on the subject of Native American, African, Asian, etc. magical practices and they too give you Occult percentiles.

So you could potentially creep up to Occult 100% without learning any more about Chinese magical practices than you would read in a Sax Rohmer novel. Which sounds terrible, and it is, but that's one of the default failings of a percentile skill system.

Anyway, next up we actually get into the important shit with the Outer Order Curriculum (Keeper Version).
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Post by Ancient History »

The Outer Order Curriculum (Keeper Version)
First things first - this is called the "Keeper's Version" because a much streamlined version that doesn't include all the details is included as an appendix. However, said appendix is immediately followed by another appendix which is supposed to be Keeper-only, so I don't know what the actual thought process is there.

Anyway, readers of the Miskatonic University OSSR might recall me talking about the alternate campaign/improvement system involved where you start as a student and your stats go up each semester based on how you spent your time, and that this could include studying Mythos tomes and thus acquiring Real Magical Power(TM), and also that this involved a rather-more-complicated-than-desired subsystem tacked on to the main CoC ruleset, involving at one point a computation involving multiple different characteristics.

This also happens here, and for much the same reason. Character progression in Call of Cthulhu sucks. I don't mean that specifically for anyone hoping to be a sorcerer, but in general: there isn't actually a good advancement mechanic in CoC. You don't get experience points, you don't spend them to improve stats. You may improve skills through use by rolling and getting lucky, you might be awarded some Sanity and skill points at the end of the adventure, and you might read Tomes...and that's largely it, until you delve into the dark underworld of optional systems. It is mechanically almost impossible to gain a skill during the course of play and improve it to the point where you can reliably use it even half the time. That's...just not a thing that normally happens.

On top of which, they don't want you to play a magic-user in Call of Cthulhu.

That sounds a little weird, since a large portion of the game is devoted to spells and tomes and shit, but it is true. Under the normal rules, you cannot start out with any percentiles in the Cthulhu Mythos. You cannot buy spells at character creation. You cannot buy a tome at character creation. The entire concept of buying and customizing your character is seen as munchkinny and Not The True Way To Play Call of Cthulhu. This is a game that discourages unique character concepts at the start and strongly discourages character growth during play...

...except, ironically, through Cthulhu Mythos tomes. And even then, you have to say "Keeper May I?" and hope you have the right combination of skills and downtime to learn some spells, knowing as you do that the Sanity clock is ticking down. CoC characters are not designed with advanced characters in mind, because in the long run everyone is dead, insane, or an NPC.

There have been some previous efforts to allow a degree of magical aptitude on the part of player characters. There is an occupation in Secrets of Kenya that lets you start play with 1D4 random spells as an African shaman. There is an occupation in Secrets of New York that lets you start play with 1D6 random spells as an African-American conjure man. There is an occupation in Harlem Unbound where you can start with up to Cthulhu Mythos 10% at chargen as an African-American conjure woman (but no spells). Supplements like Miskatonic University allow Hermetic Magic as an option, where you can cast some spells using the Occult skill available at chargen, but again, spells are up to you to find during play. Delta Green has a passel of "Occult Skills," and if you dig deep in an old pile of White Dwarf you'll find an Exorcist occupation or Medium skill or something.

But unless you're prepared for a lot of rugburn on your knees, there's not really a way to put all that together to something that says "qualified, useful, competent magician" at the outset or in the progressive future.

Until The Golden Dawn, that is. So let's go through it.

First, you create your character.

Then, you calculate your points. The formula they give is:
POW x .5
INT x .3
Credit Rating x .05
Occult x .2
Cthulhu Mythos x .04

Rounding all fractions to the nearest whole number.
So, just for shits, let's assume we have an average investigator (POW 10, INT 10) with minimum starting stats for Credit Rating (15%), Occult (05%), and Cthulhu Mythos (00%). That's (5 + 3 + 0.75=> 1 + 1 + 0) = 10 points without even trying. What can you spend it on?

First off, you buy Grade. The Outer Order has six Grades from Neophyte (0=0) [1 point] to Portal [18 points]. Starting off as a Neophyte is the minimum, so Average Man is a Neophyte and has 9 points to play with.

Then he can spend points on the Outer Order Curriculum. Just for playing, he gets a free spell: the Pentagram Ritual. This is a mildly utilitarian spell and thus puts Average Man way ahead of the other occult-minded career options. He can also blow points in buying levels of Alchemy, Astrology, Cartomancy, Esoteric Languages, or Geomancy - each block of instruction basically gives the PC free skill points in certain skills. First level of Astrology, for example, gives POWx5 skill points in Astrology, and each additional level adds 5%. So Average Man could spend 6 points and have Astrology 75%. Alchemy actually gives skill points in Chemistry and Pharmacy, while Esoteric Languages gives you 1D6 percentiles in Latin or Aramaic or whatever.

The major drawback to the skills of Astrology, Cartomancy, and Geomancy is...well...they're entirely up to the gamemaster's choice as to how useful they are. There's no stats for their use. If you succeed at a Cartomancy roll, the cards tell you something, but what?

You can also spend up to three points on Contacts, who are the NPCs from a couple chapters back. They may be your enemy or your ally. Allies help you, enemies piss in your darjeeling. The main benefit of allies, from a mechanical standpoint, is that they can reduce the point cost for getting ahead. You want that, because in case you noticed, the Outer Order kinda sucks. You want to blow through those grades fast and get to the Inner Order. But let's finish up.

Every time you go up a Grade, you get 1D6 Occult percentiles, up to (maximum rating for your grade). So Average Man can go from Occult 05% to 10% (10% being the maximum for Neophytes). More Occult percentiles does not mean more points to spend, and if your Occult skill is already over the maximum for the grade, you don't get more. So there is a min-max sweet spot where if you want the extra free 6D6 Occult percentiles from the Portal grade, you buy maybe Occult 25% and max out your Credit Rating, POW, and INT.

The Pentagram Ritual
This is your free spell. It costs 3 Magic Points and zero SAN to cast, and involves tracing a pentagram (in chalk or in the air or whatever). It is also the only spell for the Outer Order, unless you plunder the grimoires. But it's not bad. It's a low-powered combo of the Voorish Sign and the Elder Sign. It adds +3% to your skill for any Golden Dawn spell/ritual (also any summon/bind spell outside of that), and it acts as an invisible Elder Sign for three rounds. If made before a gate, there's a POWx3 chance to destroy the gate.

So that's some utility there. Not a lot. A Yithian possessed kid will still give you the exact time-space coordinates when and where your mother was sucking cocks, and there's nothing you can do about it. But you can trace a pentagram and run away, or throw a stick of dynamite, or something, which is not what you could do if you didn't have that spell.

Improving During Play
Costs for improving during play are the same, but you gain points for study. This is somewhat random, which is terrible: you study for 4 consecutive weeks, roll 1D6, and consult a table, which gives you 0-2 points to spend. Fortunately, improving in grade the costs are reductive rather than cumulative. That means if our Average Man (Neophyte, cost: 1 point) wants to increase his grade to Zelator (cost: 3 points) during play, he only has to pay the difference in costs (3 - 1 = 2 points).

This is all a terrible mess, but it is still a massive improvement over anything CoC offers as default as far as character improvement. Average Man could spend 3 points and get Astrology 50%, Cartomancy 50%, and Geomancy 50%. That might seem like a bit of a crock because those skills don't mean anything, but gaining three skills at 50% in CoC is a bit of a feat!

In practice, you're not going to want to play as part of the Outer Order. All the actual spells are part of the Inner Order. Which we will look at next time.
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Post by DrPraetor »

So Frank (and others) rightfully piss on CoC for having run an opening scenario in which one of the players was tricked into thinking his character had magical powers, whereupon his character was promptly eaten by the monster.

That sucks, but at least it's consistent with the source material. In an HP Lovecraft story that is probably what would happen to someone who imagined himself a magician.

So I'm not sold on a half-measure, which doesn't make mages (or anyone else) playable, but still breaks the genre conceits about extradimensional sciences that the superstitious will think are magic.

That said, I'm enjoying the review.
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Post by Ancient History »

So I'm not sold on a half-measure, which doesn't make mages (or anyone else) playable, but still breaks the genre conceits about extradimensional sciences that the superstitious will think are magic.
1) It does make mages, we'll get to that in the next section.

2) Lovecraft did not have a coherent vision of magic. Seriously, go check out "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward." A librarian and a psychologist pick up a couple incantations and alchemical formulae that put paid to eldritch horrors from beyond space and time in a couple hours, days tops. Other contemporary writers in the Mythos had plenty of "regular" magic - Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard had full-on wizards, even if they generally weren't chucking around fireballs.

What none of these guys really had was a strong conception of actual, real-world occultism - although HPL and CAS both read up on it a bit, the stuff they made up was a lot more fun than the crap in medieval grimoires. And like Frank and I said in our review of CoC 5.6, there's a genuine player desire for some form of magic which is accessible from char gen. Golden Dawn Hermeticism isn't even the first or second choice for what players want, but it's the best option yet to be presented...and we'll get to why in the next section.
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Post by Ancient History »

The Inner Order Curriculum
So, once you graduate out of the useless grades, you are supposed to have the Pentagram Ritual and probably an Occult skill hovering around 55%. However, if you want to start off as a functional magician character, you're going to need more. Average Man is out of his depth here, becoming an Adeptus Minor costs 21 points.

Rules are essentially the same here, except you get the Hexagram Ritual for free (in addition to the Pentagram Ritual from earlier), and you have more stuff to spend points on - and these are things you might actually want - and there are prerequisites involved.

Hexagram Ritual - Like the Pentagram ritual, but costs twice as much and is twice as effective (i.e. 6 Magic Points, Elder Sign effect lasts 6 rounds, etc.) Does not stack with the Pentagram Ritual.

Advanced Classes - Advanced versions of Astrology and Cartomancy add 8% per level to the relevant skill (and Astrology also gives you 2D3 percentiles in Astronomy per level).

In addition to that, instead of Advanced Geomancy you have Dowsing, which is its own separate bullshit skill.

Talisman Creation - You can actually buy spells to make certain magical tools. A talisman is a one-shot magical artifact that costs POW to create and Magic Points to charge. They're...okay, they suck, but learning to make one is a prerequisite for buying more advanced spells. Three examples are listed, Talisman of Banishment, Talisman of Healing, and Talisman of Will. The Talisman of Banishment protects the bearer against astral attack (not a major concern for most) if it works; the Talisman of Healing can protect against disease or poison (if the Keeper is not being a dick); and the Talisman of Will negates the first failed roll when a POW vs. POW struggle is called for, which is...situational, but something you might want to have handy if you think you're going to encounter another sorcerer.

Wand Creation - Similar concept, except these aren't one shot, are actually useful, and can only be used by the creator. Three wands are listed: Lotus Wand, Storage Wand, and Wand of Force. The Lotus Wand adds 6 percentiles to your casting, and stacks with the Hexagram Ritual, so both together give you +12 % (and if you ever learn the Voorish Sign, that stacks too). The Storage Wand is a battery for Magic Points. The Wand of Force converts magic points into a magical attack that can paralyze the victim for hours or days.

Spirit Vision lets you see into the astral plane. The astral plane doesn't figure much into normal Call of Cthulhu goings-on, but the Keeper is recommended to allow it to see "fields of magical energy such as ley lines or gates, or perhaps even creatures normally invisible to the eye (eg. lloigor or star vampires).

Astral Travel - Covered in the next chapter, but the Order lets you astrally project. Like a low-budget Dr. Strange.

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Exorcism - There are several entities that possess you in CoC, and several different means of exorcism; the Golden Dawn version is typical: costs 6 MP, 1/1D4 SAN, and you need to win on POW vs. POW. Weirdly, it's focused specifcally on Astral Parasites and not more general possession, so this might be a hard one to argue when you're trying to evict a member of the Great Race of Yith that's taken up residence in your fiance's skull or something.

Summoning and Binding Elemental Spirits - Part of the subtext of the Golden Dawn is that while they're going through most of the motions of CoC magic, it's all being filtered through their own personal world-view. The Golden Dawn magicians think they're summoning various astral and elemental spirits, but they're actually summoning and binding a bunch of astral parasites...with a 5% chance of attracting a Hound of Tindalos.

Invisibility is based on a story about Aleister Crowley; it doesn't render you actually invisible, it just wills people to ignore you. Which is still very useful, if expensive in terms of magic points.

Okay, so that doesn't sound like much...but again, it's a shitload better than anything anyone else in CoC can conceivably get as a starting character, and it's fairly expandable - all of the Hermetic/Egyptian spells in Miskatonic University, for example, can slip fairly easily into the curriculum.

Is it a half-assed thing? A bit. From a gameplay perspective, the Outer Order is a bullshit pointsink. They're trying to reconcile the source material with game material. They're not used to actually giving the PCs the opportunity to learn magic, so it's very crumbs-from-a-table.

But...

You've got a defensive/augmentation spell (Pentagram/Hexagram ritual). You've got situational talismans and utilitarian wands, one of which has a genuine offensive capability and all of which expand your basic ability to cast spells. You've got astral perception and projection. Exorcism and spirit binding. It's bargain bin Master of the Mystic Arts stuff, an you're probably going to get your ass handed to you by the first NPC Mythos sorcerer that comes along, but...it's something. Which is more than the Nothing you normally get. If you were really into the whole Golden Dawn campaign, it's almost impressive.

It is also, maybe, a platform for improvement. If the Golden Dawn had a chapter at Miskatonic University, the combination of semester improvement + graded initiation could...work, at least a little. Max out your POW, INT, Occult, and Credit Rating and be the big necromancer on campus. It's still a kludge. It could never not be a kludge, and still remain Call of Cthulhu.

Next up: The Astral Plane
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Post by Longes »

Unfortunately Wand of Force is poorly written garbage. How it works is that you spend X number of magic points, and roll X vs POW of the target. If you win the target is paralyzed for X hours.

The problem is that the number of magic points you have is normally equal to your POW, which means that if our Average Man wants to paralyze Average Security Guard, he has to spend his entire 10 points of magic just to have a 50% chance of paralyzing the guard. Even the best POW you can have, 18, is only enough to maybe use this thing twice.
Furthermore, you can't ever paralyze people for a short period of time because if you spend 1 magic point - you are going to lose against absolutely everything.

The only way Wand of Force is even remotely useful is if you have a stockpile of Storage Wands (each of which costs POW to make) or if you have the Silver Dawn order's spell for enchanting a wand that lets you suck souls out of hobos and store them as an infinite supply of magic points. The head of the Silver Dawn has one of those and he has something like 300 points in it.
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Post by Ancient History »

"Poorly written garbage" applies to most things CoC; there are options, but the best hacks come from combining various spells and options from different books to try and find something semi-workable. I never claimed it was good, I claimed it was the best attempt at a CoC magic system.
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Post by Ancient History »

The Astral Plane
Call of Cthulhu's traditional approach to actual, real-world occultism is to ignore it. This is the benefit of claiming that only Mythos magic is "real" - you don't have to actually research anything except old Mythos stories. This is also why Mythos magic tends to be an eclectic, disorganized collection of specific rituals and effects - the various authors weren't working within any well-defined system, so neither were the game designers.

Real-world magical systems are not...neat. They's expressions of specific cultures, and tend to tie intimately into those cultures' understanding of the universe and the supernatural. They don't always involve rote spells where you perform X action and Y happens. And they tend to involve cosmologies. So, the Astral Plane.

This is basically CoC trying to do the equivalent of astral projection in Shadowrun or World of Darkness - which sources were based more or less directly on the beliefs of early-20th century groups like the Golden Dawn. That being said, astral projection in CoC is...not fun. It takes an hour of meditation, 5 Magic Points, 1D4 SAN, and...
Unless otherwise specified in the spell's description, no spell in Call of Cthulhu can be cast in the astral plane.
As will be seen, doing nearly anything in the astral plane carries a Sanity penalty with it.
If a traveller goes temporarily or indefinitely insane while in the astral plane, he or she immediately returns to his or her in the astral plane, he or she immediately returns to his or her body and the astral travel is ended. Of course, this also triggers an additional Sanity loss from losses saved up until the return to the body is made. If a traveller goes permanently insane while in the astral plane, he or she is lost forever. The body enters a state of catatonia and will never regain consciousness.
We're not going to get into a lot of the mechanics - combat in the Astral Plane is bullshit, because Magic Points act as hit points and everything involves SAN loss.

Why does the Astral Plane exist if it sucks? Because source material, and because CoC is not comfortable with PCs having nice things. Ironically, there is probably a work-around for the SAN loss in the Astral Plane because Secrets of Tibet introduced a spell that basically let's you ignore SAN losses for a bit as long as you aren't physically moving, but mostly this is...eh. The general point of astral projection is, like in Shadowrun, to ghost through walls and spy on people and shit. That's fine. In a Cthulhupunk by Gaslight game, you could maybe have investigators that are part of a steampunk paranormal research team that use it in their clandestine war against the Mi-Go or some shit. But the vast majority of CoC supplements and adventures have no actual reference to it, so it's a dangling subsystem.

Next up: The Once And Future King
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Post by Ancient History »

The Once And Future King
Can't sleep. Can't write. So...OSSR.

The inclusion of Arthurian Mythos in a Mythos product is odd but not unique; the addition of it to a book on a late 19th/early 20th century occult organization which isn't normally associated with Arthurian Mythos...is. The justification for it is that two of the scenarios later in the book deals directly with this shit, and that scenario assumes the PCs are Golden Dawn occultists, so this is basically extensive backstory which somebody decided to convert into a game chapter.

I'm on the fence as to whether this is the best or the Worst Arthurian/Cthulhu crossover; maybe one day I'll do an OSSR of Cthulhu Britannica and we can do a compare/contrast.

TL;DR version: the King Arthur legends were based at least partly on a dude from sub-Roman Britain. Who worshipped Shub-Niggurath in the guise of Sheela-na-gig.
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Iron Age gape porn, or an eldritch goddess? Why not both?
Arthur was led into a trap, killed in battle with a Christian hero with an enchanted spear, and the body was taken to a magic wood, and buried, a small chapel built over the grave. Then his enemies constructed a huge Elder Sign around it, so if he did rise from the grave he couldn't leave (that isn't how Elder Signs work, but okay).

Everything was fine until the 1880s when a nerd named Randolph Northcote found the chapel and the undecayed body of Arthur...and Northcote is a member of the Golden Dawn. Which is why it's in the book. That's it. No stats, no other adventure hooks, just a 3/4 page defense of the take on King Arthur that begins:
A Note on Authenticity
In preparing this work, we have chosen to present King Arthur in a way that will strike most as radical, if not bizarre. In truth, the amount of embellishment we've added in describing Arthur up to the point of his death is not tremendously large, especially compared to the famous tales grafted onto him centuries after his death.
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Which is almost the plot of this comic!

Honestly, the whole chapter is fluff and I could do without it. It doesn't add much of anything to the Golden Dawn and isn't necessary for the scenarios a little later on in the book. I think judicious editing could have cut this book in half, easily, by nixing half the appendices and the Arthur subchapterette thing and probably combine the Inner and Outer Order rules and tightening everything up a bit.

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Tighten!

Also, that's why there's dudes in medieval armor on the cover.

Other Mysteries of the Dawn
This isn't exactly a list of adventure seeds as much as a collection of potential plot hooks taken from the Golden Dawn's history, sometimes with little Mythos suggestions tossed in. Shit like a magical duel between Aleister Crowley and William Butler Yeats, for example, sounds a lot more exciting before you look at the Golden Dawn magics and realize there aren't actually any spells for magical sendings over a distance. I mean, there are some Mythos spells that cause your opponent's flesh to melt off them like a candle, or send Deep Ones or Dimensional Shamblers or shit to kill them, but most of the Golden Dawn spells are basically deniable if a skeptic comes along challenging you to show them some "Real Magick!" - which is, I think, by design.

Okay, next up, the scenarios.
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Post by Longes »

and it contains maybe the best effort at a magic system for CoC intended to allow PCs to be wizards.
I gotta say, with a sales pitch like this the ultimate delivery is... disappointing to say the least. With the exception of the pentagram/hexagram there's basically nothing in the Golden Dawn that you'd want. Alchemy does literally nothing, Geomancy, Astrology and Cartomancy are three different ways to beg GM for plot coupons, and all the astral shit is harmful to you and doesn't plug into anything. I'm not even sure that this mess is better than the "beg GM for a spell" standard of CoC.
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Post by Ancient History »

"best effort" != "good"

It's still CoC. It's still unicorn pubic hair and cancer all the way down.

Leaving aside questions of balance - which CoC designers seem to be allergic to - there are issues with trying to form a coherent magic system in CoC. The spells that exist don't meet the needs of investigators, but of NPCs. Adding more skills is generally a no-go because actually improving skills during the course of a campaign is like getting a fecal matter transplant. If you want to start the game with absolutely anything useful...it's pretty much this or nothing, unless you go off-system with something like the Laundry Files RPG or Trail of Cthulhu.

But, like I said, this one is...expandable. There are other hermetic spells buried away in various CoC supplements, if you convince the Keeper to let you learn them. Astral Vision, the Hexagram Ritual, and Storage Wands provide three basic but highly useful abilities you otherwise can't start with or reliably obtain throughout the course of a game. It is very much a case where the Golden Dawn initiate becomes a chassis for further character development, like thugs and supercombatants in Dominions, but when compared to the other options...

Well, they suck harder. It is normally a very shitty life for occultists and parapsychologists in CoC.
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Post by Ancient History »

The Room Beyond
The first scenario in the book is set in September 1893. The PCs are surreptitiously asked by William Butler Yeats ("Frater DEDI - Demon Est Deus Inversus") about a prospective recruit to the Golden Dawn - Lord Arthur Pellgraine, who wants to start out as a member of the Inner Order, and in trade promises a "secret," hinted to be great occult knowledge. The PCs are asked to look into the matter.

The "secret" is the door to his great-grandfather's study, which has been plastered over ever since the elder Pellgraine met an untimely magickal death. The PCs can arrange to be there when the sealed room is opened, and it contains a small occult library, some suspiciously fresh blood stains that won't scrub out, and some sordid affairs involving a cuckolded occultist and an astral parasite called the Thief of Form. The main benefit of the scenario is Thomas Pellgraine's journal, which is a grimoire containing the spells Summon/Bind Astral Parasite and Aether Portal (the latter of which opens a gate to let you physically enter the astral plane, rather than just astrally projecting. If this seems like a Bad Idea, you win a free frogurt.)

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Also, this happens:
What the Tarot Indicates
The investigators may use cartomancy to foretell the progress of the various scenarios in this book. For that reason, boxes such as this one appear in each. Each scenario will have its own set of cartomancy notes, which the Keeper can then use as desired to foreshadow events.


If the PCs don't deal with the Sealed Room immediately, astral parasites manage to kill all the servants and prospective member Arthur Pellgraine manages to drop through a doorway to materialize partially bonded with the floor, which is ultimately fatal...after a while.

On the other hand, we also get partial stats for William Butler Yeats - mainly, his "Likely Skills" and spells.
No stats are provided for Yeats, as they would be grossly inaccurate at best (just what was his DEX?). Instead, relevant info useful to the Keeper in portraying this real-life individual appears below.


Next scenario: Hell Hath No Fury
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Post by DrPraetor »

So, wait - did one of the previous chapters have rules on what astral parasites are and what they do?

Call of Cthulhu really does live and die on the strength of the bestiary.
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Post by Username17 »

DrPraetor wrote:So, wait - did one of the previous chapters have rules on what astral parasites are and what they do?

Call of Cthulhu really does live and die on the strength of the bestiary.
I think they got official stats nine years later in Secrets of Japan. "Because 'Fuck You', that's why."
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Post by Ancient History »

The Astral Plane section does have stats for Astral Parasites. You don't actually care.
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Post by DrPraetor »

I'm not so much interested in the stats (which are gibberish in CoC anyway) as in what they are and do.

If these astral parasites are going to feature as default major antagonists in a CoC campaign, they had better be somewhat more involved than some generic hazard. Do they build incomprehensible cities on the astral plane? Do parasatized people become compelled to do act out frightening and incomprehensible rituals? If all they do is eat your POW attribute, that's pretty lame.

I'm warming to the book considerably, since having occultists who don't understand that they're really summoning eldritch horrors is... a decent mimic of Lovecraft's style. The order of the golden dawn are fools who will be driven to madness when they realize the truth, yeah? That's genre-appropriate.
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Post by Ancient History »

Astral Parasites as conceived in The Golden Dawn are somewhere between the floating lifeforms of "From Beyond" and the old concept of "neutrarian" spirits, depending on intelligence. They have only astral stats - INT and POW, with HP equal to Magic Points - and their main "attack" is matching POW vs. STR, CON, INT, or POW and if they win, they drain 1D3 stat points. One of these things, without a pentagram ritual or hexagram ritual, is a closet troll. A swarm of these things will fuck up about anybody. On the astral plane, where none of your spells work, you're down to Astral Combat, which involves a POW vs POW test, loser loses 1D3 MP and 0/1 SAN. Their victims sicken and die in accordance with whatever stats are being drained, they vary from animal-level intelligence to human-level. No civilization mentioned.

[/edit] Now, the Golden Dawn thinks when they summon and bargain and command these things that they're elemental spirits or demons or angels or whatever, according to the theology they've absorbed. And the smarter astral parasites will play into that. And this is one of the few times you can summon something in CoC and have relatively decent control over the process and not be fucked by the outcome. Hell, the smarter ones even known 1D4 spells, so if you call the right one you can even get magical instruction out of the deal, at least potentially.
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Post by DrPraetor »

That's a disappointment, but something you could build on.

Lovecraft monsters are always scary and dangerous but - in the fiction - there is not any hard restriction on peaceful or productive contact. You should absolutely be able to learn spells from Ghouls, who kill and eat people but will also hang out and play chess if you're interesting conversation.

Contact with the Elder Things went very badly in At the Mountains of Madness but that was substantially the humans fault, it was entirely clear that relations - while potentially very dangerous - were possible.

So this delivers on dangerous-but-potentially-crucial talking to the monsters except that, frankly, these astral parasites are weak tea. If they were like a Colour out of Space you could talk to, that would have some legs.
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Post by Ancient History »

Hell Hath No Fury
March 1984.
Another Golden Dawn acquaintance offers the investigators a case involving a mysterious family curse, a haunted wood, and some questions that won't be answered until much later...
The writers really did see the Golden Dawn organization as an engine for PC adventures, since the various members each have their social contacts and occult interests, so potentially could run into lots and lots of mysteries, which they may not have the time, ability, or inclination to investigate - or maybe the PCs get a reputation as occult troubleshooters and are approached on the QT. Either way, it beats the standard CoC default of "One of your relatives have died, and..." The Order also provides a good currency, since various members can help them out (providing occult grimoires, spells, discounts on point costs for increases in initiate grade, etc.)

Anyway, one of the founders (Dr. William Westcott) was approached by a fellow freemason with a problem, and thinks the PCs can help. The client friend in need is Jason Black, Esq., who gives them a freemason handshake and explains the family curse:
And ye shall suffer the curse of Black Annie: blood shall flow and the dead shall walk and ye shall be the last of the line.
"Black Annie" being a witch sentenced to death by an ancestor. Black had a bad dream, and since:
Then two weeks ago his wife miscarried. Five days ago, he found blood seeping from the walls. The following morning he received news that his father's brother had been thrown from a horse and had died. The maid has complained of seeing ghosts, and dog has vanished. Milk goes sour, food rots overnight. And two days ago an inverted pentagram was carved on the door.
Honestly, sounds like a regular couple of weeks in 1894 Britain.
The whole affair is upsetting his wife
Holyshitfuck! She just miscarried two weeks ago. I would hope she's a bit upset.

Anyway, the idiots doing the execution of the witch botched the job, and carried her "corpse" into the same wood that houses the remains of King Arthur. She was trapped by the giant Elder Sign, but progress eventually cut down enough trees that now she's free to work her spells again (note: Elder Signs do not work that way, also she is only loosely "free" since she's still buried in a shallow grave.)

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You assholes.

Anyway, cue investigation... Lots of red herrings, needless NPCs, strange nightmares, and attacks by "witch-kin" which are little clay homunculi that do your bidding, and which Black Annie sends to attack PCs that get too close. Eventually, the investigators should find a device called The Witch-Fynder (which is broken, so using it requires 1st) a Mechanical Repair roll, and 2) burning some magic and SAN points) and end up in the Deepwood (wtf, did I step into a Ravenloft novel?) and the PCs may or may not run into a closet troll with is "The Debris Beast, Guardian of Oak Wood." Then they have to deal with the witch herself.
Black Annie has been dead for many centuries now, and there is little the investigators can do to permanently harm her (she regenerates 1 HP per hour). Bringing her to 0 HP, the investigators may well be fooled into believing her beaten. Should they leave her for dead and return to Helmsdon, the Witch-Kin still attack and she summons another byakhee to snatch Jacob Black again.

There are two ways to permanently kill lack Annie. The first is magically, with spells. The second is to remove her from the wood. Bringing Black Annie out of the wood subjects her to over 400 years of aging. Even her powerful magics are impotent against such forces and she withers away to dust in moments, bringing her fury to an end.
Some quick notes:
1) Pretty much all of Black Annie's powers are bullshit, not established Mythos mechanics. They're pure pulled-out-of-the-ass for this story crap, right down to not being able to leave the wood and turning to dust if she does. This is the kind of crap which is mindcaulk all the way down, and why we say CoC doesn't have a system - not only are these all unique effects, but there's no way to actually replicate them using established CoC mechanics. It's all fiat.

2) The PCs have no spells, except presumably the Pentagram Ritual, which doesn't deal damage. In fact, none of the Golden Dawn spells explicitly cause damage, because that would presumably qualify as black magic. The Golden Dawn doesn't even get Enchant Blade/Bless Blade, and that's one of the default spells for creating a magical weapon.

3) There is nothing in there ever suggesting the PCs need to drag the dead witch's corpse out of the wood. Nada. Of course, there's also nothing that says they shouldn't do a proper job of it this time and stuff the hag with dynamite in every orifice. Try regenerating from that!

4) The entire King Arthur's woods subplot is a giant red herring that has nothing to do with this scenario, and is only included because a future scenario will deal with it and somebody conceived of this as like a mini-GD campaign or something.

Just a fair point to make: the PCs are probably low-level Golden Dawn initiates, not even Inner Circle yet, with only the Pentagram Ritual to protect them. And fair enough, maybe that'll help (the stats don't actually specify what happens when use try to use that on Black Annie or her wytch-kin). Throwing a bunch of newbs against a 400-year old Mythos sorceress seems a tad unfair, and their main treasure is a fragile mechanical artifact that hurts their brain to use. Which would be useful, if it did anything other than point to witches (it doesn't), or if the PCs were in the witch-hunting business (they aren't), or if CoC clearly defined what constitutes a witch (which it does not).


As an aside, Frank brought up the Astral Serpents from Secrets of Japan. As far as I can tell, the two books were written completely separately, and no connection between Astral Serpents or Astral Parasites was intended. Does that mean that GD rituals could allow you to fuck with Astral Serpents? Or at least see them?

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Maybe?

Next up: La Musique de la Nuit
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La Musique de la Nuit

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November 1897, Paris. The head of the Golden Dawn, Smuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers calls on the investigators to...

It's the Phantom of the Opera. It's the Phantom of the Opera mashed up with, of all things H. P. Lovecraft's "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" and "The Music of Erich Zann." A denizen of Yaddith accidentally materialized in Paris and got stuck hiding in the Place de l'Opera, where it enlisted the help of Erich Zann, who is doing the Phantom thing (and would prove to be an inspiration to Gaston Leroux). Everything is fine, Zann is helping fetch the components the alien sorcerer needs to fix their ship and gtfo, and...the PCs intervene. This is one dead cat away from an episode of Alf.

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The PCs go to Paris on to deliver some books to Mathers, get invited to the opera, and then there's a murder. Locked room mystery (sortof) with an alien sorcerer that can move through walls and a ship that can teleport short distances.

...and there's not a whole fucking lot the PCs can do about it. The story presumes that even if they manage to track down and drive the "Phantom" off, they don't have the resources or intelligence to follow. That appears to be essentially correct. If the PCs corner the Yaddithian, they Yaddithian disappears through a fucking wall. Speaking of which:
This spell is a specialty of Yaddithians. No method is provided in this scenario for investigators to learn it, and it's extremely unlikely to be found in Earthly occult tomes.
Moving on.

Sheela-Na-Gig
April 1899. After the Elder Sign forest was destroyed back when Black Annie went free, Randolph Northcote has been trying to bring Captain America King Arthur up to speed on the late 19th century. Arthur, in turn, has tracked down the Grail to a whorehouse in Soho run by Marilyn Constantine. Arthur is basically a magical terrorist with a hard-on for destroying Christianity and a plan to somehow usurp the British Empire and rule it in the name of the Goat with a Thousand Young.

Enter Aleister Crowley. Recently joined the Golden Dawn, already pissing in everyone's tea, and an initiate of Shub-Niggurath sex magicks via Marilyn Constantine (note: no sex magicks are actually covered in the book, which is a great shame, as it was one of the key issues of the Inner Order in real life, and it's not like CoC hasn't touched on the subject every now and again. But I digress.)

Anyway, Northcote suspects Arthur is up to something and arranges a meeting with the investigators, Arthur finds out and kills Northcote, Arthur convinces Crowley to come with him to meet the PCs so they can figure out what they know.

(Note: my favorite part of this is the sidebar "What If They All Died?" which asks the rather reasonable question about how the Keeper is supposed to play this if the PCs from the Black Annie scenario all died, either during that adventure or during the interval. TL;DR: roll with it.)

So, it's pretty sandbox-y, but there's a timetable. Standard CoC fare, really. Except you're investigating an occult murder at a whorehouse dedicated to Shub-Niggurath with Aleister Crowley, so that sounds kinda fun when you put it like that. Arthur, to complicate the plot, summons some Astral Parasites to attack the PCs, and Scotland Yard comes calling because Arthur has been cutting up prostitutes and they think Jack the Ripper is back, and oh yes Arthur is planning to blow up St. Paul's Cathedral on Easter using grail-zombie suicide bombers.

And about the Grail...
The Holy Grail of Legend exists, but much like Arthur it is not what people think it is. This gold chalice is a relic from the worship of Sheela-na-gig in England circa the 6th century, but it may well have been made long before in another land. The grail heals 5 hit points of damage for each pint of fresh human blood drunk from it. This uses 5 magic points from the bowl's store, and causes a 1/1D4 SAN loss in the person healed for each pint consumed. The bowl is "charged" by the energy from rituals to Sheela-na-gig through the use of a Channeling spell (see right). [...] Normal weapons and damage cannot harm the grail. At the Keeper's discretion, magical weapons or spells could damage or even destroy this artifacts (assume it has 10 hit points). [...] Whether or not this cup is the same cup that Christ drank from at the Last Supper is irrelevant to this scenario, but the Keeper is encouraged to draw his or her own conclusions.
Also, the Grail can bring people back to life. This isn't pretty, but a fun option.

"Channeling" is one of those spells that really should be a standard fare in the main rulebook, but gets relegated to relative backwaters like this one: it lets you move Magic Points from one source (like a ley line) to another (like a previously-prepared receptacle like a storage wand). Buried in the spell description is the rules for ley lines, which again would be better suited to a chapter on actual magic, but you take what you can get (yes, there are other rules for ley lines elsewhere in CoC, no they do not match these). Also, "ley lines" aren't something anybody knows about by that name in 1890s Britain, because the name wasn't applied to those until the 1920s in The Old Straight Track.

And no, the Channeling spell is not written down anywhere, even though it would potentially be very useful for the PCs even if they don't end up as guardians of the Holy Grail.

Also, there's another, different Grail in Cthulhu Britannica, which goes with their different take on King Arthur. Maybe we'll talk about that at some point.

For some reason, the scenario writers think the investigators are going back to the scene of where they killed/confronted Black Annie for clues about Arthur. This seems like a terrible idea, but players do shit like that. It also doesn't actually provide any benefit, since Arthur is all about being in London to blow up St. Paul's and have freaky sex magick rituals with prostitutes.

The PCs can "win" by killing Arthur, but...
Should this occur, his body suddenly bursts into flames: a strange white fire that erupts in an instant and consumes him entirely in the blink of an eye before extinguishing again. Is he gone for good? Of course not. He is truly immortal, an undying servant of Sheela-na-gig. he will return, somehow, some way, but when he returns is up to the Keeper.
Lame copout is lame copout.

Serious question time: Do either of these scenarios require the PCs to be members of the Golden Dawn? Not really. Does being a member of the Golden Dawn help the PCs in their investigations? Kinda, I guess, maybe. Does Golden Dawn magic help the PCs know what the fuck is going on and/or survive? A little.

Which makes it a smidgen better than your average CoC scenario. Just a smidgen.

Next up: Appendices and I wrap this book up.
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Post by DrPraetor »

So, the first "adventure" would make sense as an HP Lovecraft story. In both Through the Gates of the Silver Key and the music of Erich Zann, the nominal protagonists don't do shit.

http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Through ... Silver_Key

http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/The_Music_of_Erich_Zann

So you can't capture the Nug Soth - is a reason given why you can't help him yourselves? They find humans disgusting but again, this is a Lovecraft monster that Golden Order types can-and-would-be-expected to at least try to talk to.

can you capture Erich Zann? He's mute (?) and would presumably be very slippery if you tried to interrogate him, but he ought at least to be able to tell the characters to stop seeking sorcery... for their own good!

The King Arthur adventure doesn't sound bad at all, although as an outline it's no different from any other track-the-evil-foosle adventure. Does it have cool set piece locations or things of that sort? Why does King Arthur send astral parasites after people - does he do Golden Dawn magic himself? Are the astral parasites related to Shub-Niggurath somehow?
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Does it have cool set piece locations or things of that sort?
There's a brothel and two churches.
Why does King Arthur send astral parasites after people - does he do Golden Dawn magic himself?
Actually, Arthur's version of the ritual requires him to sex and kill people. I really don't know why he doesn't just summon a couple Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, except that he's in London. I honestly have no idea why he chooses astral parasites as his go-to.
Are the astral parasites related to Shub-Niggurath somehow?
Nope!

Although this is worth pointing out: Call of Cthulhu does not have specific "lores" of magic related to individual Mythos entities. There are individual spells related to this or that entity or race, but they are very seldom marked as such in the way that certain spells are classified as Voodoo or Hermetic or Egyptian, and the spells are never grouped together in any way so that you might expect an NPC sorcerer to have any given spell. Like...any given spell. If you're facing a cultist of Cthulhu, they could quite literally have anything. There is no way to anticipate if they will come equipped with Contact Cthulhu or Summon/Bind Cthulhu or Clutch of Cthulhu or...anything.

And in large part, this is because there is little to no effort at actual worldbuilding in the CoC setting. There are very few attempts across all the editions to standardize or connect any of the disparate cults and cultists - they are all effectively unique to a given scenario (except when they aren't). So not only do they not connect, but there's absolutely no way for anyone in-character to have any idea of what any given cult/sorcerer is capable of.

Except for the Golden Dawn, because they have a set core curriculum. Let me give another example:

Code: Select all

Alchemy			
Baneful Dust of Hermes Trismegistus	Creates sixteen doses of a dust that damages non-terrestrial creatures. Requires a successful Chemistry or Pharmacy check.	4 MP	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 193
Brew Draught of Phan	Creates drug that erodes the victim's will.	-	The Keeper's Companion 1.113
Brew Dream Drug	Creates draughts of drug that allows group access to the Dreamlands.	4 MP (+1 per additional dose), 2 SAN	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 194
Brew Paut	Creates paut, each ounce of which restores 1 MP.	5 MP	Miskatonic University 227
Brew Space Mead	Creates drug that allows humans to survive travel through space.	20 MP per dose	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 194-195
Create Love Philter	Creates a potion that can make the imbiber fall in love with a target.	X MP, 1d2 SAN	Cthulhu Invictus 96
Distill Vril	Creates a draught which heals 1d4 hit points; only one draught of vril can exist at a time.	5 MP	Mysteries of the Raj 69
Dust of Suleiman	Creates three doses of a dust that damages other-planar beings.	-	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 204
Enchant Ink	Creates enough ink for nine charms.	1 POW	Secrets of Japan 141
Identify Spirit	Creates a dust that exposes possessing spirits and entities.	12 MP, 2 SAN	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 209
Petrify	Creates liquid that calcifies whoever drinks it.	X MP	The Keeper's Companion 1.80
Plutonian Drug	Creates drug that sends user's mind back in time; use can attract the Hounds of Tindalos.	-	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 211
Powder of Ibn Ghazi	Creates a powder that makes magically invisible things visible.	1 MP per dose	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 212
			
Divination			
Augur	Caster receives portents of the future (POW x 5) to understand.	4 MP, 1d2 SAN	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 192-193
Chant of Thoth	Increases chance to solve a problem by 2%/MP spent, provided caster has at least 10% in that skill.	X MP, 1d4 SAN	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 197
Detect Enchantment	Caster can detect curses, Evil Eyes, and other harmful enchantments on humans, animals, or crops.	6 MP	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 204
Find Invisible Things	Creates a fetish that locates invisible things for 1d3 rounds.	1 MP, 1 SAN	Dark Ages Cthulhu 87
Find Magical Things	Creates a fetish that locates magical things for 1d3 rounds.	1 MP, 1 SAN	Dark Ages Cthulhu 87
Second Sight	Can perceive auras.	1 MP per 5 min.	Miskatonic University 231-232
Spirit Vision	Can see into the astral plane.	2 MP per 5 min.	The Golden Dawn 47
			
Enchanting			
Bind Soul	Imprisons a soul in a specially prepared vessel for various uses; if a sorcerer can master the spirit (POW vs. POW) they can use its Magic points and knowledge.	10 MP, 1 POW	Cthulhu Dark Ages 82
Bless Blade	Creates blade capable of damaging entities immune to ordinary weapons. Blade must be of an elemental metal (iron or silver). Requires a blood sacrifice (animal of SIZ 10+).	1 POW, 1d4 SAN	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 194
Create Amulet	Create an amulet that can mitigate 5 points of damage or raise the wearer's POW by 3 for 1 hour each day.	5 MP, 1 SAN	Cthulhu Invictus 95
Create Charm	Create a charm that has minor benefit (most often, 10% bonus to the owner's Luck roll). If made with Enchanted Ink, can protect from some unnatural creatures provided the user takes no offensive action.	3 MP	Secrets of Japan 139-140
Create Limbo Gate	Create permanent 2-way gate to Limbo.	3 POW	Cthulhu Dark Ages 84-85
Create Mystic Portal	Create a permanent gate between two locations.	1-5 POW	Cthulhu Dark Ages 85
Enchant Knife	Enchant knife to increase chance of other spells.  Blade must be of a pure metal (iron or gold). Requires a blood sacrifice (animal of SIZ 4+).	1+ POW, 1d4 SAN	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 206
Enchant Lance	Creates weapon capable of impaling any entity, even those that can't normally be impaled. Weapon must be of an elemental metal (iron or silver). Requires a blood sacrifice.	1 POW, 1d4 SAN	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 206
Enchant Magic Staves	Month long-ritual enchants staves that provide extra MP, and absorb damage from spells aimed at the caster.	5 POW	Miskatonic University 231
Lotus Wand	Adds +6% when casting other spells.	1 POW	The Golden Dawn 46
Prinn's Crux Ansata	Creates an ankh that can banish Mythos entities. Ankh must be of unalloyed metal.	5 POW, 1d6 SAN	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 212
Storage Wand	Can store MP equal to the character's POW.	2 POW	The Golden Dawn 46
Sutra of Exorcism	Create o-fuda charm with Enchanted Ink to bind or banish a member of a Mythos servitor race.	5 MP per sheet	Secrets of Japan 143
Talisman of Banishment	Creates talisman to protect against astral beings.	X MP, 1 POW	The Golden Dawn 46
Talisman of Healing	Creates talisman to cure poison or disease.	X MP, 1 POW	The Golden Dawn 46
Talisman of Will	Creates talisman that negates the first failed roll in a POW vs. POW struggle.	1 POW	The Golden Dawn 46
Wand of Force	Turns MP into a beam of magical energy that can paralyze the victim.	3 POW	The Golden Dawn 46
			
Exorcism			
Banishment of Yde Etad	Banishes most transdimensional human or human-like intelligences present of their own volition. Requires 3+ participants.	1d4+3 MP, 1d4 SAN per participant	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 193-194
Cast Out Devil	Frees target of possession if caster succeeds at a POW vs. POW check (assistants add half their POW, rounded down.)	10 MP	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 196
Cast Out Shan	Expels a shan (insect from Shaggai) from a host.	10 MP, 1 POW from caster and each victim	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 196
Dimiss (Spirit)	Banishes a spirit, if the caster wins on an MP-spent vs. POW roll.	MP equal to POW of spirit	Cthulhu Dark Ages 86
Exorcism	Prevents an astral parasite from afflicting a victim with a successful POW vs. POW check.	6 MP, 1/1d4 POW	The Golden Dawn 47
			
Healing			
Heal	Maximizes the healing rate.	3 MP	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 209
Heal Animal	Causes an animal to become extremely healthy and vigorous.	4 MP	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 210
Healing	Heals 2d6 hit points worth of damage.	12 MP, 1 SAN	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 209
			
Initiation			
Awaken the Inner Light	Month-long ritual that can increase POW by 1.	1 MP per day	Miskatonic University 227
Initiation	Symbolic death and rebirth ritual; if it works, initiate gains 1 POW and 1d6 percentiles to Occult skill.	-	
			
Summoning			
Summon/Bind Lesser Kami	Summon/bind a lesser kami in an object.	5 MP per task	Secrets of Japan 142
			
Utilitarian			
Bliss	Prevent SAN loss for a period, but cannot more or physically defend themselves for the duration of the spell.	3 MP per 10 minutes, 1 SAN	Secrets of Tibet 43
Channelling	Channel MP from a ley line (or other source) into a spell or other use.	1 SAN	The Golden Dawn 133
Dream Communication	Sleeping caster can contact and communicate sleeping target(s) at great distances.	2 MP	Mysteries of the Raj 69
Engender Prosperity	Gain MP x $100 over the course of a month.	X MP	Miskatonic University 231
Instant Enlightenment	If the caster succeeds on a Mythos vs. POW roll, target gains 1d3 Cthulhu Mythos percentiles and loses 1d6 SAN.	-	Secrets of Japan 142
Invisibility	Caster wills others to ignore him.	1d6 MP per minute	The Golden Dawn 49
Power of Nyambe	Gain an emergency surge of 2d6 MP.	1 POW	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 212
Restorative Meditation	After 1 month of deep contemplation, can make a SAN roll to restor 1d6 SAN.	-	Secrets of Tibet 44
Still Suspicion	Make people less likely to take notice of the caster for one month.	10 MP	Miskatonic University 231
Unmask Demon	Destroys magical disguise. Requires 3+ participants, each of whom may contribute up to half their MP. Total MP spent must overcome the target's POW.	X MP	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 217
Voorish Sign	Cthulhu Mythos +5% when casting a spell.	1 MP, 1 SAN	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 218
			
Warding			
Circle of Warding	Creates a barrier to summoned entities.	X MP	The Keeper's Companion 1.79
Create Bad-Corpse Dust	Creates a barrier to zombies.	2 MP	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 201
Elder Sign	Activate an Elder Sign, rendering gates unusable to the Great Old Ones, Outer Gods, and their minions.	2 POW	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 205
Empty Mind	Doubles the caster's POW against one mental attack.	6 MP, 1d3 SAN	Secrets of Tibet 43
Enjoin Pnakotic Pentagram	Creates a ward against Hounds of Tindalos, Great Race of Yith, and other time-travelers, as well as the risen dead.	2 POW	Miskatonic University 230-231
Hexagram Ritual	Combination of Elder Sign and Voorish Sign; gives +6% bonus on casting some spells, and acts as an Elder Sign for 6 rounds.	6 MP	The Golden Dawn 45
Pentagram Ritual	Low-powered combination of Elder Sign and Voorish Sign; gives +3% bonus on casting some spells, and acts as an Elder Sign for 3 rounds.	3 MP	The Golden Dawn 41
Seal of Isis	Protects inanimate objects in warded area against magical attack.	X MP, 1 SAN	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 212
Seal of Nephren-Ka	Protects an area that creates a barrier against spirits and spells.	1 MP per point, 1 SAN	Dark Ages Cthulhu 90
Warding the Eye	Protects against the Evil Eye.	2 MP	Call of Cthulhu 5.6 218
Yes, I have spreadsheets and shit, and this is a crappy copy/paste. But the point being, you need to get a sense of the kind of spells written out in various CoC books which fulfill what would normally be considered basic functions that PC or NPC sorcerers might be expected or want to do - and we're talking basic minimum-SAN shit, not bone melting or summoning tentacled horrors or any of the fun stuff. Look at how much is there, and how weirdly specific a lot of it is, and how spread out it is...and you get an idea of why it's really fucking difficult to put together an actual magic system for CoC out of parts they already have laying around. Yeah, there are individual effects and shit that you'd want, but the number of spells you need to fulfill most of basic functions like "detect magic" and "defend against magic" increases geometrically, because the effects are not written as part of a generalist system - they're usually written in a spell/counterspell system, and spell and counterspell might not exist in the same product.

Which, on the plus side, means you might get multiple spells that create/destroy zombies. But on the negative side, that makes the whole zombie creation/destruction thing more complicated for no damn reason, and probably all use different mechanics for no reason.
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