RPG’s by their nature, use stat blocks to put everything in the world into relative terms so that the player characters can interact with them. Some of this information is only marginally relevant, some is irrelevant, some stats shouldn’t even be considered (assuming there is an INT for a door, unless you’re in a D and D type world it should never come into any kind of play). Every way that a player character can interact with a character, monster, or item has some relevant statistic, even if it’s something you never quite take into consideration. The door mentioned above will have a strength of sorts, a resistance to damage, a weight, a mass. The bulk of the time, with inanimate objects this boils down to a single statistic or two and either opposing said statistic to the relevant opposing statistic by the player character (or npc or monster) interacting with it, or to the resistance table (I love the resistance table, and while I have heard that it is less relevant to the 7th edition, it will always have a special place in my heart, and it sounds like the statistic interactions relates to the old resistance table formula).
But every character has their statistics. Their base statistics, their skills, and these will each change in various ways as game play continues. This is true in any game, but in CoC, the progressions aren’t quite the same as in many. Hit points don’t ramp up with ‘levels’ (unless you’re playing the old d20 version), and depending on the time scales, aging can raise some stats and lower others, some injuries can impact stats, and experience is reflected in skill checks and I love the skill increases with experience in CoC, characters end up feeling very individual very quickly. Few games permit this level of complexity in character development without feeling clunky. Having said that, characters do become more powerful in advancement of skills, and building an advanced character on the fly can be quite daunting. Rolling up a CoC character can be a bit time consuming, though not cumbersomely so. But in a game where character mortality is so readily addressed, it is a bit intimidating.
And the Keeper has to keep this in mind with every npc, and creature encountered. Granted, it is easy to let some elements slide in characters who are of minimal import, but a Keeper has to always be ready to respond to the game as it plays out. A minor npc can turn into a major running character easily, and gaps may need to be filled in as this character develops. Especially if things develop to a point where one has to be considered as a potential replacement pc down the road (always tricky, but it does help explain why the character gets involved with an ongoing situation, which is often problematic).
In rpgs, there comes a point for every player and every game master where there is a moment of disillusion, where the player has a ‘can’t stop seeing the man behind the curtain’ feeling and sees the stats as just numbers, ways of equating things. This is easy to set aside, but it is a sobering moment, and the stat blocks in CoC can be quite intimidating when looked at. Remember, most monsters, even a good number of the ‘non mythos’ monsters, are serious threats to pc survival. Also, keep in mind that combat is a serious matter in a game where it is so easy to die, where many of the monsters have major immunities, and can inflict massive damage. You can’t stay with that disillusionment, but once you get through it, you do gain a new resource.
Take those stat blocks, make new monsters that may be identical in core numbers to something established, but change the things that aren’t the stats, what it looks like, where it’s from, how it functions, and what those ‘new attacks’ are.
Stat blocks make the characters, make the monsters, make the cars and doors and buildings and….the world…..but don’t forget that it is a world…never let it just be the blocks, never forget the numbers, but never let them just be numbers.
(having said that, its always a good idea to keep a few old characters around from some other scenarios or sourcebooks for a quick npc’s core information when you need it, for when that horrible moment when the players refuse to take that right turn and instead go left down the road in a direction you didn’t expect.)
callofcthulhukeeper 