Miscellany: Running a "Call of Cthulhu" campaign, part 11

Even with the best players and game masters, running any pen and paper role-playing game can eventually turn into a grind. Combat soon boils down into the abstract, with people announcing numbers and getting more thrilled at the result of a roll than in the DM's description of the action. While this is certainly not a wrong way to play, it does give a computer-game feel to what is supposed to be an interpersonal experience.


My players recently expressed an interest in alternative forms of plot resolution (AKA getting away from the dice), so I decided to work the concepts discussed in this post at Socratic Design into my next session. Enter...Jenga:



I realize it's a bit LARP-y, but here's the idea. Every time a player wants to boost or reduce a die roll by 1d6 (which could be critical in a gunfight with evil Mythos cultists), I'll have them remove a block from the bottom of the tower and place it on the top. A skilled player can usually build up 36 stories or more, but I'll assume for the sake of argument that my players are klutzes - probably no more than 30 or so moves until the tower collapses." The kicker is, though, that failing a Sanity Roll will also make them remove a block. Upon total collapse, something...bad...happens to everyone in the party.