Attributes - LunarNeil/Call-of-Cthulhu-Campaign GitHub Wiki

The Investigator has several things that help describe them, like their name, or their motivation, or their social status. The things that actually define what they are allowed to do are their Attributes, which are divided up into the category of Skills, Stories, and Possessions.

Skills

Skills are knowledge attributes which also provide mechanical bonuses.

Skills levels are measured by their Modifier, which is the number the Skill adds when you use it as a bonus on a roll of the dice. Higher numbers are better, and represent a greater degree of knowledge about a subject. The more an Investigator uses a Skill, the higher the Skill becomes.

Investigators will often have several Skills, some at a low level and some at a high enough level that you could consider them experts in the field. The starting level of a Skill is 3, and the natural cap for Skill progression is 8. Even a level 3 Skill represents a college-level understanding of a subject, so an Investigator has to know quite a bit about a subject before adding it as a Skill.

Stories

Stories or Storylines are personal narratives that provide arbitrated benefits or penalties.

Stories are individual links of a larger Storyline chain. If the Story is about your Investigator turning to drink to escape some hardship, the name of the Story might be "Heavy Drinker," which also serves as a short summation of how you apply it.

While being a heavy drinker is normally a negative, it could end up being helpful if you need to drink someone under the table, or explain how your Investigator knows the owner of every pub in town. Their effect depends upon the situation and application, so creative roleplay is essential.

Investigators have a small number of Storylines to start out with, but they usually gain quite a few more as their character develops. Players can pursue them intentionally to open up new narratives to explore, or game events may impose them on the Investigators directly. The choices the Investigator makes will determine how the Storyline progresses and which Stories are added to their sheet.

Possessions

Possessions are major material assets an Investigator has at their disposal, like a family estate, magic artifact, or University office.

These should be interesting things with great personal importance, and not easy to obtain with money. If it can be carried around and used by anyone then it is probably an Item, not a Possession.

Possessions remove the need to track finances, and give players a place to track the unusual resources they have. Handling small amount of money is rarely an interesting task for the players, and so Possessions focus on kinds of assets that can change the way the player interacts with the game world.

Unlike the flexibility of a Story element, Possessions are narrow in scope and easy to access.