Recently, in both 1920s Call of Cthulhu games I\u2019m running, the players laid forth plans to get out on the town and get some shit done \u2013 knock on doors, talk to folks, figure out what was happening. But as they went about their business, they soon found that all the shops were closed and people were unavailable. It was Sunday, and most places are closed on Sunday.<\/p>\n
This forced the players to retune their expectations and come at the problem in different ways. In one game, where they wanted to interview a shop owner, they asked if there was an apartment upstairs that might be the residence of the owner. There was indeed a residence, and a successful Luck roll later, they found the shop owner home on a Sunday morning, surprised in her morning robes, but willing to bring them in for tea and a brief visit.<\/p>\n
In the other case, the group wanted to find a professor of archaeology at Miskatonic University and ask them some questions. Since there\u2019s no school on Sunday, chances are the whole department is closed and no one available. \u201cWe\u2019ll try anyway \u2013 see if anyone is working the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another Luck roll and this was a Critical Success \u2013 as it happened, they found the department head redoing his bookshelves on a Sunday, and were able to capture his imagination with their recent artifact finds. They engaged with the NPC and got the clues that sent the story off on a whole new direction\u2026<\/p>\n
In both cases, what might have originally been seen as a blocker \u2013 it\u2019s Sunday so no clues for you! \u2013 was actually an opportunity for both the players and me to reframe the scene and solve the problem in a new way. It was less about preventing clues or encounters and more about verisimilitude and presenting the world in a way that feels real.<\/p>\n
I love the word \u201cverisimilitude.\u201d First off, six syllables is a lot, and 50% more than my last name, so it\u2019s just a big, neat word. Also, it packs a lot of punch for investigative horror games where the disparity and dichotomy between our \u201cnormal\u201d reality and the cosmic horrors we encounter are what gives these stories a lot of punch.<\/p>\n
The word means \u201cthe appearance of being true or real\u201d and while that seems pretty straightforward, it\u2019s definitely a tool that can easily be misused or mishandled in these sorts of games. It\u2019s an amazing tool that definitely needs careful use.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not even going to talk about people who use it to justify prejudice (racism, sexism, etc) in their games, saying \u201cXXX people had no rights in that time period, so we\u2019re going to lean into that part of the game.\u201d Blech, no, shut up and go away.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m talking more about people who get lost in the details of the period and roleplay the least important part of the games\u00a0 – like buying bus tickets or presenting a dinner menu. These are neat, yes, and certainly taking a brief moment to set the scene and ground the story in historical appropriate details helps build the atmosphere.<\/p>\n
But often writers and GMs get lost in these details and use them as excuses to avoid real stakes or interesting traction in the story. Just in my above example, I could have just said, no the place is closed on Sunday and moved on. But the players pushed back and asked for a way to work around in a manner that felt real<\/em>. So they themselves leaned into the details and countered the real situation with appropriate details of their own.<\/p>\n This is good, and we want to encourage and reward this behavior. Good players, here is a clue.<\/p>\n But also good GM \u2013 I didn\u2019t let the verisimilitude get in the way of the story and instead used the details to create something different than what was expected.<\/p>\n The next thing I\u2019m trying to do with this verisimilitude is with the weather, which everyone is discussing but no one is doing anything about. Seriously, I describe the weather all the time, especially when it becomes inclement \u2013 rainy or even snowy and cold. One of my groups is currently in London during the month of February, and before that were in NYC in January, so I was constantly describing the cold weather in an effort to bring the scenes alive.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s great, but\u2026 then what? So it\u2019s raining and cold and overcast and damp, and we need to carry umbrellas and wear coats and hats\u2026 And then? How do these details make acting during these scenes more interesting and real? What tools can we as GMs bring to bear that make the weather more impactful?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t actually know at this moment, but what I am wrestling with is being realistic with PC exhaustion, or \u201cyou haven\u2019t slept in 36 hours because you\u2019ve been running and gunning from the police, so you\u2019re too tired to do anything.\u201d \u00a0Again, this came up in both of my games, and I wrestled with how to bring realism to the game and still keep it fun.<\/p>\n No one wants to be left out when the group gets together to discuss clues and the mystery and what to do next. I don\u2019t. Those scenes are one of the best parts of the game, and it\u2019s no fun to be told by the GM \u201cyou failed your CON roll so you\u2019re asleep in the other room.\u201d<\/p>\n I know that it\u2019s not fun, because I did that in both games and watched the players itch to get back in the scenes. As a follow up then, I had the PCs check their CON, and that potential success could end in a reward of MP or HP, resulting from a good night\u2019s sleep. And then I just picked up the whole scene and brought everyone together for breakfast together. It worked great.<\/p>\n Verisimilitude is not just a great word – it\u2019s a tool to use to ground players in the realness of our game, and is particularly useful in period games. But it can be overused or misused to put up roadblocks or churn for players who just want to engage with the story.<\/p>\n Paying attention to the day of the week often feels like too much bookkeeping for my tastes, but it allowed me to bring some realism and shift the tones of scenes without much effort. It worked very well and I will definitely use it again.<\/p>\n However, if my investigators spend too much time out in the cold rain and happen to get colds or the flu, I\u2019m not sure needing to spend the weekend in bed will be as fun for them as it is for my storytelling. I need to find a better way to use weather to impact the game.<\/p>\n What are your tips for using verisimilitude to build details and realness in your game?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Closed on Sundays Recently, in both 1920s Call of Cthulhu games I\u2019m running, the players laid forth plans to get out on the town and get some shit done \u2013 knock on doors, talk to folks, figure out what was happening. But as they went about their business, they soon found that all the shops […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,2],"tags":[8,45,13,44,23],"class_list":["post-557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-call-of-cthulhu","category-gaming","tag-call-of-cthulhu","tag-clues","tag-gming","tag-investigative-horror","tag-rpgs"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weird8.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weird8.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weird8.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weird8.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weird8.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weird8.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":558,"href":"https:\/\/weird8.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weird8.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weird8.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weird8.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Cold and Tired<\/h1>\n
Paying Attention<\/h1>\n