Call of Cthulhu Starter Set Sessions

The group I play Call of Cthulhu with on Friday nights is a select bunch of Che, our Keeper of Arcane knowledge, Ian & myself joined by Dave for the first time last night. Che, Ian & Dave have played as a group a while back, before I discovered the group earlier in the year. Che & Ian have been roleplaying together for around 20 years. We usually play once every two weeks & Che hosts us at his house.

I met Che via his forum posts, first via a Runequest related post and then via his excellent podcast Roleplay Rescue, which I can heartily recommend. I liked his old school approach to things and joined a short lived Castle & Crusades campaign he ran until an untimely TPK (See Vinster's Last Stand). Che will be running a new C&C campaign starting in September, once the school holidays are over as Ian & myself both have kids and between us are away for most of July & August. So the the meantime we've agreed to play some Call of Cthulhu .. Our sessions generally start around 19:30 but we tend to turn up at 19:00 so we can have a coffee and a chat for half an hour or so. The sessions end by 23:00, sometimes a little earlier.

I've played Call of Cthulhu since 2e back around 1983 & played a lot of 3e when I was at polytechnic. In fact I've written more scenarios for Call of Cthulhu than probably any other system although I've actually rarely run it. As usual, there are various reasons for this but the main one I guess was that at the time there was a much better CoC KoAK than me, Bryan, who ran some of the best RPG sessions I've ever played in.

Last night was the second session of our Call of Cthulhu 7e Starter Set scenarios. The first session was 3 weeks ago when we played "Paper Chase". Last night we started "The Edge of Darkness". In both sessions I'm playing Jessie, who is young black female history student with a reckless streak, a strong religious belief & excellent fashion sense. Probably as pretty much as far from my self as I could get. As always I take a while getting into a character, slowly building up the personality. I'm certainly not the greatest role player but I hope I do a passable job at creating interesting and memorable characters. Jessie is currently completely unconvinced about the occult and believes she is involved in a drugs war between rival gangs as the use of hallucinatory drugs seems to be the only way to explain what other people are reporting they have seen.

So far the sessions have been great. Che is a relaxed GM who encourages us to play our characters and is flexible when we go off on tangents. Ian & myself are fairly complementary players as I think it's fair to say Ian is less cautious than me and more combat/action orientated. As I've only played the once with Dave I've yet to get a feel for his preferred style but my initial thought is that he too is more direct than me. If last night's session is anything to go by the concluding session for  "The Edge of Darkness", which will likely be the last session before we break up for our summer recess  should be a blast.