TEXT: INTRODUCTION
  Have you ever been frustrated by your players’ arro-
  gance? Have they ever taken your most well-crafted 
  and terrifying scenario and spat it back at you? Well, 
  you can take it easy from now on. It’s payback time.
  Call of Cthulhu is a game which is all about atmosphere. 
  Like the literature on which it’s based, crawling chaos and 
  unimaginable horrors close in on the characters as they 
  carry on their titanic struggle for goodness and sanity.
  At least, that’s the noble ideal. But what happens 
  when your players get so jaded they don’t care? Does 
  this sound familiar?
  e KEEPER: “Okay, the thing lunges at you again, 
  dripping ichor. It claws you across the chest and 
  throws you backwards into the wall.”
  Rolls dice. “Lose four more hit points.”
  e PC: “No problem, I still have three left. I blast it 
  with my sawn-off.”
  e KEEPER: “Gahhh!”
  Irritating, huh? It’s long been my contention that 
  players know far too much about their characters’ 
  well-being. For example, can you say how many SAN 
  points you think you have left? Oh yeah? Well how 
  do you know something out there isn’t just waiting to 
  push you over the edge?
  Every roleplaying game needs rules, sure, or we’re 
  no further on than when we were kids playing 
  make believe. But I think a few Paranoia™ style 
  gamemaster tips are in order. Fear and Ignorance 
  are the essential ingredients of a Keeper’s Revenge.
  You might ask, why bother? The simple answer is, 
  anything which makes your players think like their 
  characters is a good thing. Fear is the key.
  STEP ONE: Don’t tell them how many 
  hit points they have. 
  Let’s get back to our friend with the sawn-off. Now in-
  stead of telling him how many hit points he’s lost, let’s 
  just tell him what his symptoms are. Check this out:
   e KEEPER: “The thing lunges at you and hits you 
  in the chest. You stumble backwards and” (rolls 
  dice) “slump to the ground. The pain in your chest 
  is incredible, like a vice was wrapped around your 
  torso. When you look down through your torn 
  shirt, you can see one part of your chest moving 
  in when it should be going out and vice versa. 
  You’re almost panting in pain.”
  e PC: “Good God! Somebody get me to a hospital!”
  See the difference? The PC in the first example 
  doesn’t really care because he knows he can hang 
  on long enough to put the monster down. The second 
  guy, he doesn’t know what the hell’s going on, so he 
  panics. For your information, he has a terribly painful 
  condition called flail chest.
  This is a jump away from the rules, of course, which 
  state that PCs can keep going until they’re down to 
  their last few hit points. It may not be to everyone’s 
  taste, but hey: it’s just a suggestion.
  Of course, if you’re going to go down this path, a 
  little knowledge about medicine is a good thing. Or 
  just get your hands on a good first aid manual. The 
  ideas there are pretty frightening. For your players, 
  anyway. Heh, heh, heh.
  STEP TWO: And the same goes for SAN 
  and Magic Points. 
  The best way to introduce a phobia to a player is not to 
  say: “Okay, Jim, you’ve got a phobia of snakes.”  That 
  noise you just heard was the atmosphere closing the 
  door as it left the room.
  Instead, introduce madness the way it creeps into real 
  life: phantom voices, sudden anxiety attacks, strange 
  feelings of dread and doom. Do it right, and your 
  Keeper’s Revenge Kit
  by Jonathan Turner
  chaosium digest classics
  “The Keeper’s Revenge Kit” originally appeared in the Chaosium Digest, 
  Volume 20, number 6 (July, 1997), written by Jonathan Turner.
  It is a copyrighted work, but is being freely     
  distributed under a Creative Commons License.
  
  player won’t know whether he’s actually going mad, or 
  whether he’s having a genuine supernatural experience.
  Never ask for SAN rolls. (See step three for how to get 
  around it). Never tell a player he’s just failed one. Let’s 
  just say someone’s had a bad shock - running into a 
  monster for example. They fail their SAN roll and lose 
  a couple of points. Their character would maybe start 
  hyperventilating. Heart palpitations, anyone? Nausea? 
  The symptoms would also theoretically be similar for 
  losing magic points, but would include tiredness, lethargy 
  and that sort of thing. 
  Of course, your smart-aleck player who has read the 
  rule book from cover to cover will be asking himself 
  what the hell is going on. Work it right and he may 
  think he’s under some kind of magical attack. And 
  maybe he is! That’s the beauty of the whole thing!
  STEP THREE: Ask for lots of appar-
  ently meaningless dice rolls.
  Keep a list of key skills for all of your players pinned 
  to the back of your shield. You do have a shield of 
  some kind, of course. (Homemade ones are better 
  because then your players don’t know what the hell 
  you have behind there).
  My list includes SAN, Luck, Spot Hidden, Listen, 
  Idea, Know, and maybe a few others like Sneak and 
  Hide depending on my mood.
  Of course, my misguided sense of fair play means I 
  always let a player make the rolls for his character, 
  though sometimes I get him to flick the dice behind 
  my shield so that he can’t see what the result was.
  Every so often, casually ask a player to make a dice 
  roll. Look behind your shield and hum to yourself.
  Of course, maybe your player has just successfully 
  made a Spot Hidden check, and you pass on the relevant 
  info and let him tick his skill. Or maybe he’s just failed. 
  Or maybe you were just doing it to wind him up. He’ll 
  never know. Heh, heh, heh.
  STEP FOUR: Change the monsters.
  Good players can game as if they never read the rule book, 
  but hey, we all know they have. You can see it in their eyes.
  They find a webbed footprint in the riverbed and 
  they’re breaking out the shotguns. Oh, good. It’s only 
  some Deep Ones, they’re thinking.
  But what about a Deep One who can fly? Or a Byha-
  kee which can take on human form? There’s no reason 
  not to twist things for your own perverted motives. 
  If your players are good, they would rather enjoy the 
  mystery of being kept in the dark and getting the 
  pants scared off them.
  STEP FIVE: Make them work for their 
  skills OR Make your props interactive.
  Have you ever done any “Library Use” research? 
  Ever spent hours translating a book? Me neither. 
  But I bet it’s pretty tough.
  So your players expect to get away with just a flick of 
  the dice, eh? Not in my game, pal.
  Recently my group of misfits was in Egypt when 
  they came across some mysterious hieroglyphics. The 
  resident Egyptologist offered to translate them with 
  the help of an assistant.
  An interesting fact which I came across in my research 
  is that hieroglyphics are all consonants, with no vowels. 
  So I prepared a sheet with the translation on it, but 
  took out all the vowels and replaced them with blank 
  spaces. (Computers are wonderful things).
  The great thing about this prop was when the two 
  translators got sucked in, scribbling away like they 
  were on some kind of game show. The other players 
  carried on while the scholars muttered and bickered 
  among themselves. And in that moment, they were 
  their characters.
  And that, to me, is what it’s all about. Getting into 
  character can be difficult when you’re sitting in a cosy 
  room drinking coffee and eating munchies. It’s been 
  my happy experience that anything you as Keeper can 
  do to put your players on the spot will be even more 
  enjoyable for them than for you.
  Of course, I draw the line at going into total Paranoia™ 
  mode. My players are currently going up against Yig, 
  but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to head down to 
  the pet shop and buy a python.
  Though, now that I mention it ...
  
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