There are campaigns where it happens though, where one character reveals they are a shapechanger who killed off the original a few sessions back, or that they have been co-opted somehow, or are actually a member of the secret police, but I've never been a part of one personally. So I was very surprised when last week's Call of Cthulhu session very nearly included the first time in my life where one character caused the death of another.
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SPOILER WARNING: If you ever intend to play the legendary
Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign, read no further, lest you be spoiled!
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New York City, 1925. Our group of five investigators, having come together on a previous adventure in Peru five years prior, are summoned to the Big Apple by another companion, the globetrotting author and death cult investigator Jackson Elias. They arrive too late, however, and see him murdered by a rag-tag group of cultists tied to an African sect called The Bloody Tongue.
Over the past few weeks, their investigations have led them to the cult's headquarters in the basement of an innocuous shop in Harlem called The Ju-Ju House. They have forced the shop's owner, Silas N'Kwane, into the basement at gunpoint, and discovered a pit covered by an immense stone lid. It takes three of them to winch up the enormous stone covering, after which one of them leaves to investigate shots fired upstairs by the comrade they left to cover the rear.
Randall Emerson Winchester II, formerly His Royal Majesty's diplomatic envoy to Hong Kong, keeps a bead on N'Kwane with his treasured trap-shooting piece. Delbert Greenwald, an academic from Miskatonic University left unsettled by the impossible things he witnessed in Peru, is drawn closer to the edge of the pit despite the strange wailing coming from within, his .45 automatic grasped tightly in his sweaty fist. Meanwhile, reformed burglar Jack Cole looks for any other egress from the room.
Greenwald peers over the edge of the pit and behold something even more unimaginable than what he saw in Peru; a twisting mass of writhing purple tentacles, each about as big around as a man's leg, and each capped with a horrific human visage.
There are perhaps two dozen such faces, perhaps more, each wailing, moaning, screaming, whispering, laughing in a maddening cacophony. [Game Note: This causes a Sanity test, where each player must test the will and mettle of their character by rolling under their SAN score.]
Greenwald fails his check and shrieks into the pit, preparing to empty the clip of his pistol into it. Randall flinches almost imperceptibly, but it gives N'Kwane the opening he'd been waiting for - he bats aside the muzzle of Wincheter's 8-gauge shotgun, and charges the twitchy, tweedy professor, shoving him into the pit and to the floor of it 15 feet below. "Now the chakota can feast!" he cackles maniacally.
His triumph is short-lived, however, as the furious Winchester regains his composure and his Greener Far Killer barks deafeningly in the basement. In such close quarters, the blast almost cuts the elderly African in half, and N'Kwane's shattered remains tumble into the pit.
Greenwald blasts away at the horrid creature at point-blank range, but his bullets have no effect and he pitches the useless .45 in frustration.
Cole scrambles over to the edge of the pit, hoping his climbing skills will help him extract Greenwald, but he too balks at the horrific sight in the pit and crabs away from the lip. At the bottom of the pit, while several of the chakota's heads begin devouring the remains of Silas N'Kwane, a handful turn their mindless attention to Greenwald, but he is able to dodge their slavering bites.
[Meanwhile at the table, I am figuring out who goes next - normally it goes from the highest Dexterity score to the lowest, but holding a firearm adds 50 to this figure, putting Winchester to the top of the betting order.
"What do you want to do?" I ask Jeff, Winchester's player, who has his chin in his hand and is deep in thought.
There is a pause, and then he says, "I am half-tempted to just drop the lid on that damned pit."
Silence surrounds the table, as everyone present (even the two players whose characters are fighting for their lives upstairs) knows this will unquestionably end the life of Prof. Greenwald.
But they all have played these kinds of games long enough to recognize the tactical and strategic validity of Jeff's plan.
Greenwald's player, Scott, is the first to speak. Looking directly at Jeff, he asks earnestly, "What would Randall do? Never mind what Jeff would do or what Scott wants, what would your character do?"
Jeff is clearly pondering this, so I tell him to take his time, and return to the battle upstairs. This doesn't take very long to resolve, so all too soon I turn again to Jeff and say, "so, what does Winchester do?"
Jeff takes a deep breath, mimes holding an invisible shotgun and using its butt to break the catch on the winch holding the stone lid nearly 15 feet in the air. "I do it," he says firmly. There is a sharp intake of air somewhere around the table - maybe it was me though.
"So be it!" I say.]
With an enormous crash, the stone lid drops from the ceiling, closing the pit in a cloud of dust and bits of broken stone.
[A hush descends upon the table, but as I return to my papers to determine who goes next, I am shocked to discover that Winchester has acted out of order! My fault entirely.
The +50 DEX bonus only applies if you are shooting a firearm, not using it in melee or any other way. I inform the players, undo Winchester's premature action and set the scene:]
Jack, sitting on the floor with his hands behind him propping him up, sees Winchester striding over to the winch holding up the stone lid, clearly intending to seal the pit with Delbert still inside it. The second-story man has a single moment before he does this…
[I turn to Totty, Jack's player, and say, "What do you do?"
He looks briefly at his character sheet and says, "I steel myself for what is in the pit and scramble over to the edge of it. If I make it, I stretch my arm into the pit so I can help Delbert to clamber out."
I check the pit's description and shake my head sadly. "It's 15 feet deep, your arm is maybe three feet long, figure Greenwald's arms over his head give him another two feet for a total of... maybe eight?. That means the professor has to make at least a 36-inch vertical, while fighting a monster, just to have a chance at it..."
"To be fair," Jeff adds, "those conditions are probably the best ones possible for a middle-aged academic to achieve a 36-inch vertical..."
"Be that as it may," I reply, "it won't give much of a bonus to his Climbing skill (which is only 20%)." Someone else cursed in frustration while Totty looked over his sheet again.
"Well, how far can I extend my body into the pit without falling?"
"Roll your climb skill," I tell him. Now, Cole's Climbing skill is 50%, as befits a former burglar, so rolling 50 or lower on percentile dice denotes a success, but rolling below half your score is called a strong success and typically grants a better result. Rolling below one-fifth of your score (10%) is called an extreme success, with an even better outcome.
So what a time for him to roll a 04!
When the table had quieted, I resumed the narrative.]
Jack scrambles across the floor, and heedless of his own safety, drops into the pit, arresting his fall with an iron grip on its lip. Delbert sees the possibility of escape from a previously hopeless situation, and lunges for the outstretched arm of his comrade...
[Due to the literal helping hand from Jack Cole in play, I give Greenwald a bonus dice, so he gets an extra 'tens' dice for his percentile roll. He rolls a 53 and a 23, so using 3 points of his rapidly diminishing Luck stat actually allows him to succeed.]
With a mighty heave, Jack swings the academic out of the pit and they both clamber to safety, mere seconds before Winchester slams off the catch on the winch handle with the butt of his shotgun, and the lid plummets to the floor with a massive slam. The creature is trapped, its disturbing cries muffled, and all three of the investigators are safe outside the pit.
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A bit more happened before the adventurers fled the Ju-Ju House (one of them clinging to life from the battle upstairs), but that sequence has definitely been the highlight of the campaign for me, and the closest I have come to seeing one player character killed (or in this case, doomed) by another.
And best of all, this campaign is just getting underway! How many more such opportunities might we encounter?
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