Why Lethal Systems Change Player Behavior

In this episode, Jon and Seth talk about Milestone Leveling and the benefits of PC Death!

D&D characters "level up"... traditionally by XP awards, but a new concept known as "Milestone Leveling" allows characters to level up after certain milestone achievements. Can a concept like this be used in CoC? Instead of "ticking your skills" and then rolling to see if the ticked skill can qualify to be increased, what about "Milestone Improvements" that award each character a pool of skill points to disburse into their character sheet as they see fit, to any skill, after certain milestone achievements?

Call of Cthulhu is infamous for being a lethal game. But PC death has become some weird taboo in a lot of circles where the characters cannot die or else it ruins their fun.

Seth is of the camp that fully believes the best lesson a player can have is when their first character dies. "Players play smarter. Years of lethal games before we moved to CoC is the primary reason we have a low body-count."

Jon thinks that CoC has a reputation, (especially in the longer classic campaigns), for players beginning the campaign with antiquarians and journalists, and ending the campaign with munition dealers and ex-pat soldiers.

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We can't do this show alone. We want to thank our amazing editors Max Mahaffa and Edwin Nagy for their hard work and keen skills at making us sound awesome!

We also want to thank John Sumrow, for our badass logo. He's a very talented artist, so please follow him on Facebook, check out his official website, and please consider joining his Patreon account.

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And finally, we want to thank The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets for generously allowing us to use their song, Gluttony, as our intro and outro music. If you are a fan of Lovecraft's writing and the Call of Cthulhu RPG, then you need to check out The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. Please check out their BandCamp site and their official band site.

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