Call of Cthulhu Companion App

An Role-Playing Game Character Management Application

Overview

Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction role-playing game based on H. P. Lovecraft's story of the same name and the associated Cthulhu Mythos. Much like Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu where people role play a character they created following a written story line or scenario. This application is designed to provide assistance in the maintain of a player's character throughout gameplay.

This is a work in progress

Problem Statement

Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction role playing game that requires a lot of planning and moving parts. When players run a campaign – a series of rounds that branch out into a larger story– there is a lot of things to keep track of. Everything from NPC (non-player character) that were written into the story, detailed conversations that players might have had, or items that may hold some form of significance. After playing several rounds, players have a tendency to not remember certain detail, especially if several weeks pass between play throughs.

What I would like to solve with this application is the issue players and game masters are having with keeping track of character details and important information that can easily be lost without a campaign run.

Personas

The Player

Players are the active participates of the game. They are walking through the story that has been planned and organized by the game master. The are normally unaware of what has been planned out; if there are multiple rounds or if the players are apart of an entire game campaign, they will need to be able to keep track of story events, items acquired, and their own character's status. Also, since Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction game, there is a very likely chance that characters will die or go insane quickly, depending on how the character is played.

Tools They Use

Call of Cthulhu Character Sheet

Dice Set

Pencil/Pen

Paper/Journal or Phone

This user will be using the application the most.

The Game Master

The person who plans out the game and the person who will being doing the most work before, during, and after each round. They need to not only write out and plan the game scenarios, but keep track of all playing characters, their status through out the game. Preferably, they would either keep the character sheets after the round ends or make updates to player character sheets within their copy of the character sheet .pdf, assuming that it's been shared with them. As a campaign goes on, the game master is building their campaign around the player's character growth.

Tools They Use

Laptop or Tablet

Call of Cthulhu Rule Books

Dice Set(s)

Pencil/Pen

Paper or Journal

Story Telling Assets (Images, Maps, Notes for Players, etc.)

The game master will not be using the application but will probably be receiving output from it.

Insights

After doing 10 different sessions with players of the Call of Cthulhu game, both observing and participating in round play throughs, I was able to synthesize and pull three high level insights that I was able to pull forward.

Cthulhu
Guidebooks And Rules Can Be Cumbersome To Get Through

Call of Cthulhu is a game that has different versions and ways of playing, depending on what edition or type of Call of Cthulhu players and game masters. Each version of the game might have different rules, as well as different character sheets.

The current, commonly played version of the game is Edition 7 but there are additional materials players and game masters need to dive into in order to properly set up and understand the game (Quick Start Guide, Investigator Companion, Keeper's Rule Book, and more).

Users Have A Hard Time Keeping Track of Their Characters

Throughout a round of Call of Cthulhu, a player's character could potential go through several changes. They could loose health and sanity, gain or loose items, increased their skill proficiency, etc.

Players normally update the physical paper character sheet during the round but if the sheet gets lost or damaged, the player might have to make a new character sheet if it hadn't been saved as a .PDF somewhere.

If a lot of time has passed between rounds, the play will have most likely forgotten what had happened during that last round.

Users Struggle With Taking Story Notes While Playing The Game

Game masters sometimes build out extremely detailed stories and worlds within the Call of Cthulhu game. They try to share as much resources as they can with their players (maps, story items, images, etc.) but, at a certain point, players will have to take their own notes.

Taking notes can distract players from playing the game and remembering story character names, locations, important events and items can be a little hard to remember and keep track of.

Solutions

Keep Track of Player Charactres

Players can go to the home page of the app and see a list of the characters that they have made or easily create a new one.

When a player selects a character they want to view they will be brought to that character's profile page that is divided by the following:

Traits

Where user will see their physical and active characters physical traits.

Skills

These are abilities and skills that are unique to that character, depending on upbringing and occupation.

Inventory

These are items that a character has on their person such as personal items, weapons, or money.

Backstory

This is where the players are allowed to get a little creative with the character. They can get as descriptive as they want with how their character looks, their background, important people or items that they have, or their encounters with the unknown.

Journal

This is where players can upload notes on what happened during their round. This is important to keep track of things that happened during the rounds, what a player's character saw or what other characters might have done through out the round.

A character profile can be shared/exported out as a PDF that will automatically upload to the auto-generate character sheet associated with the Call of Cthulhu game.