Declaring an end to "Library Use" forever

How to do public records research in games like Liminal Horror, OSR/NSR games, or anywhere you want to get rid of skill checks

Jan 18, 2024

Of all the things I could possibly run for her, my fiancé decided that she wants more Call of Cthulhu. She’s always down to try something new, but Lovecraftian horror is what she comes back to, the thing she’ll ask for unprompted after enough time spent apart from Miskatonic University.

Lucky for me, she’s not married at all to Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition, cause I’m sick of it. A spreadsheet of skills, a 320-point-buy system that can result in a character who is somehow a medical genius with no knowledge of chemistry, or even first aid. You know what system she actually loves? Mausritter, with its intuitive checks, creative solutions, visual inventory. So the solution is a no-brainer. I showed her a 1920’s visual inventory character sheet for Liminal Horror, which uses the same system as Mausritter, Into the Odd, Cairn, and others.

Reader: Her eyes lit up. She went, “Oooooo,” and I hadn’t even told her that I was the one who designed the character sheet. Liminal Horror it is! Now to get to the task of translating awesome Call of Cthulhu modules for NSR/OSR play — I’m thinking I’ll start with A Time to Harvest first.

So here’s my problem: “Library Use.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the Lovecraftian genre of Call of Cthulhu, it has a unique genre convention that, among all things, is the most difficult to translate between systems: Periods wherein the characters go to libraries, tax offices, and public records houses to look for archival information. Call of Cthulhu modules are full of these.

The Good: It’s a cozy genre opportunity for your investigators to bury themselves in musty tomes. It has an antiquarian, spooky, gothic feel worth preserving. It’s a good opportunity to give players detailed handouts to pour over, and gives the world depth a realism.

The Bad: The way Call of Cthulhu handles this is terminally un-fun — in short: a pass/fail check using skills like “Library Use” or “Accounting.” Your players have elected to send their action heroes to a tax office for the day, and they have a likely chance of walking away with nothing? Even generating some fun fail state leaves them empty handed for their attempt at creativity. Folks: it sucks.

Liminal Horror does away with this sort of thing. Instead, we get some ass-kicking GM principles, mainly:

Information should never be kept behind rolls.
Provide information readily and freely to facilitate critical thinking and clever play. Elicit questions from players and give them direct answers.

Of course, we could just reward the players coming up with an archival research solution by revealing the answer and maybe ad-hoc inventing a cost.

But it doesn’t quite scratch the itch, when what we began with is an entire pillar of the genre. When it comes to the genre we’re going with — 1920’s Lovecraft/Arkham investigation — I wonder if there is a way to preserve this feature of the genre without building skills back into a game that wisely disposed of them.

Yes. I think I’ve got the answer, and it’s called the Archival Research rule.

First, a disclaimer, or rather an ingredient:

You’re gonna need fronts.

There’s only one thing you need in order for this rule to work: You have to be tracking your major threats/fronts/factions using some kind of progress track or clock.

Or, at least, you must have a list of “moves” for each of your groups of baddies— a small list of concrete actions they can take to move forward with their agenda and impact the world in a way that makes it tougher for the characters to navigate.

So — The mafia: abducts a new victim | recruits one of your allies | buys up a major business in town. The supernatural pandemic: spreads to someone you know | causes the closure of a major institution | evolves to a new stage of symptoms. The police: take your roommate in for questioning | make something you want disappear/inaccessible | put you on the suspect list. You can put it in a list format or on a track of escalating moves and consequences. Or do both!

Frankly, I’m of the opinion that you should be doing this no matter what system you use, no matter what kind of adventure you’re running, particularly if it’s supposed to involve a compelling story of any kind. But it is a particularly useful if you are adapting an adventure or scenario between systems.

I’ll refer to them in the following rule as your threats.

The rule: Archival Research

When you, the player, want to immerse yourselves in public records for a period of research time, envision the process, who is helping you, how you recruit their help, and decide with the GM if the access to information comes as a cost — social or otherwise. Then, all of the following occur:

A period of time passes, usually a day, possible a bit longer.
You find a significant clue that reveals a new location, NPC, or other significant detail to further your investigation.
All of the GM’s threats make a move or advance against the players.

When threats advance, the consequences should be clear to the players and impose on their surroundings, rather than “behind-the-screen” consequences. Before the players rush to follow up on their new clue, take time to reveal, either overtly or subtly, that several strange or unfortunate things have occurred while they buried their nose in research.

Why this is a vast improvement over skill-based research:

Downtime advances the story instead of bringing it to a halt or lull — I love any opportunity to both encourage downtime and use it to pace out the adventure in creative ways. I’ve spent countless hours debating how to handle resting in D&D 5e, for example but my latest inspiration is the hot new DungeonWorld hack called Chasing Adventure, which solves this brilliantly with its own “Settle In” move: You rest for however long the fiction demands, you replenish all resources, and the “GM advances the Ominous Forces.” Thanks for the inspiration, Mr. Moore!
It gives players a reliable mechanic to fall back on in times of great uncertainty — Another inspiration here was the “Cozy Move” from Brindlewood Bay, which allows you to clear a condition and get a clue with a little bit of roleplay, no dice involved. TTRPGs are full of risk and certainty, and in a cosmic horror mystery game, players risk feeling helpless, lost, or entirely on the wrong foot. This rule gives players risk-free way to get to the next part of the story.
There are no rolls — No skills, no new stats or subsystems, no risk of a particularly boring failure. This isn’t always desirable, lots of designers seem to think eliminating dice is always a win, whereas I find that players love to roll. But in this circumstance, the fail condition just sucks too much. Your players already made their action hero go to the tax office. Let’s not put them through: “You spend a day at the library, and you fail to find a book.”

Anyhow, I’m satisfied, and now I can give this a try for a while before deciding if I should have hacked a PbtA solution instead of an NSR solution. But if I love this, maybe I’ll expand it into a whole conversion guide from Call of Cthulhu 7e → Liminal Horror.

Now, if only I can crack the code on more personal knowledge and research checks…