Creating a Call of Cthulhu Character (7th Edition) in Fantasy Grounds

Fantasy Grounds is an amazing tool for online roleplaying sessions, and can even be a great tool to organize and present a face to face game with some basic setup and a monitor or projector. There are quite a few fully supported rulesets, and most of them have great automation built in to really streamline your game sessions. But while the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition ruleset for Fantasy Grounds is pretty impressive, there is little to no documentation available for how to use many of its features. While the Basic RolePlaying System (BRP) it is built upon is pretty easy, the character creation process has some areas requiring a bit of clarification. Hopefully this page can help.

So fire up Fantasy Grounds to the CoC7E ruleset, and let’s get started.

Step 1 – Create the Blank Character

Before we get to actually creating our intrepid Investigator, we need to make sure we have the correct materials loaded to actually populate our character sheet. Your Keeper/Host/GM should be able to help you with this, but it is generally going to involve having one of two things loaded. It will either be the reference materials for the Call of Cthulhu ruleset (this will be called “CoC 7e Reference”), or the Investigators Handbook (called “Call of Cthulhu 7e Investigators Handbook”). Your keeper will be able to help you load whichever he has made available to you.

Next we have to open a blank character. Once we are logged in, the icon that is typically at the top right side of the Fantasy Grounds desktop should be a Characters button. Once we open that window, we will have a list of characters, with portraits, staring back at us. Unless this is our first Investigator, in which case it will be empty. Just click on the green plus symbol, and our new character will be created with the character sheet open for us to start working.

Step 2 – Name and Portrait

Once our character exists, we need to give it a name and select a picture. Don’t worry too much about this, we can always go back and change it later. But for now, we want something to differentiate it from other characters. Especially if other players are making their investigators at the same time as you. To assign a name, just type it in on the appropriate line in the character sheet. It will automatically update in the character selection box.

Next click on the larger square icon on the top of your character sheet. The usual Fantasy Grounds token/picture selection screen should open allowing you to navigate through whatever images you have available to you based on what you might have locally, and what your Keeper may have shared for this campaign. Once you select something suitable, it will update on your character sheet as the portrait, and as your character token. This image will also update on the character selection box. Neat! We can close the character selection box at any time by the way.

Step 3 – Roll Attributes

The next step in creating our character is to roll our attributes. While this process is fairly simple, there are a lot of ways we can approach this. I am going to focus on three different approaches, each with their own benefits.

Method 1 – All by Hand

The first method, and perhaps the simplest, is to just roll the dice by hand and add them to the character sheet. Anyone familiar with Fantasy Grounds should be aware of how to roll multiple dice. Simply left click and hold on the die, in this case the d6, and while you have a d6 hovering under your mouse, right click multiple times to add dice to what you are about to roll. So left click and hold on the d6, then right click twice. Now you will have 3d6 loaded on the mouse, and you can drag that right into the chat window. That’s it. Fantasy Grounds shows your dice rolling, and then the chat window will show each die face, and the total.

But not every attribute is rolled with 3 six sided dice. Some are rolled as two six sided dice, then you add six to the total. The familiar 2d6 +6. This creates a roll between 8 and 18, giving the character a leg up over a general 3d6 roll, which can go as low as 3. To accomplish this, you need to use the Modifier box that is at the bottom left of the Fantasy Grounds desktop. If you put your mouse over that box, your mouse wheel will now cycle through a positive or negative modifier to apply to your next roll.

So simply set the modifier box to a plus six, then left click and hold the actual six sided die at the bottom of the screen. When you see the floating d6, right click once, and it will become 2d6. Now drop it in chat. The result will be a 2d6 +6, with both die faces rolled showing, and the added +6. Finally, it will show you a total.

So now that we know how to roll both by hand, where do we put those? Which attribute is a 3d6, and which is a 2d6 +6? Here is a handy reference list for what attributes we need to create to make a character, and a list of which characteristics are calculated based on the ones we roll. Another benefit to using Fantasy Grounds, all the  Figured Characteristics will auto calculate for you on your character sheet.

These rolls, generating a number between 3 and 18 (or 8 and 18) are not the totals we use for our characteristics however. As the chart above shows, after making the roll, we need to multiply the total by 5 to get our actual characteristic. So if we roll a 10, the attribute will actually be a 50.  We need to type these each in by hand unfortunately, but it is one of the few things we have to type out at this stage. We roll 9 times, including Luck, and the other values are calculated for us automatically.

Method 2 – Shortcut Rolls

One way to streamline things, rather than setting the modifier box each time for a 2d6 +6, or multiple clicks to grab multiple dice, we can set up shortcuts in Fantasy Grounds to do this for us. This is a great tip for general use of the software, not just for character creation. Now this option is pretty much localized, I don’t believe your Keeper can set these up for your client. However, they can create a note file with the text already typed out, and players may be able to drop them right on the shortcut buttons at the bottom of their screen.

And that’s where shortcuts go, the bottom of the screen. After they are created you can either click on that shortcut to fire it, click and drag that shortcut to the chat window to make the roll, or just hit the corresponding Function key to fire it off. F1 for the number 1 spot, F2 for number 2, and so on. Not only that, if you press the keyboard modifier buttons (Shift, Alt, Control) you get entirely new sets of shortcuts you can create and use. Pretty much anything can be automated this way.

For our use, we are going to create both a 3d6 shortcut, and a 2d6 +6. Now sure, we are only going to actively use these when creating characters for the most part. But if you are the keeper, and plan on creating a lot of NPCs, fully fleshed, by hand, this becomes an incredible time saver.

Here is how we do it. First, we type out the command we want to trigger into the chat window. The key is, we don’t hit enter so the command submits, instead, while it is still sitting there in our chat entry line, we just click and drag it to whichever shortcut we want it to live in. That’s it.

The command for rolling a die using a chat command in Fantasy Grounds is /die. This is followed (after a space) by the die string, using standard die notation. So for the three six sided dice, the command is “/die 3d6” (without those quotes around it). After creating shortcuts, you can even right click on them and customize their label, to make them a bit more descriptive for you.

Method 3 – Hidden Tables!

One feature that is certainly not well documented, but a huge boon when creating characters, is the Tables Table. Yeah, I said Tables Table, but click on the Tables icon on the right side of your Fantasy Grounds desktop to open it. If you don’t have that icon, you might have to enable it by opening your Library and selecting it as visible for you.

Once you have the Tables open, you will find a few very useful things, all related to character creation. First and foremost is a table named Characteristics. When opened, it should look like that table up above right there. You can (and should) resize it to make it cleanly legible. I recommend widening it to it looks like I have shown. There are also tables listed for each Attribute, but we aren’t going to worry about those right now. Why? See that little grey die icon on the far left of the top of the Characteristics table? Click it. Go on. Then watch your chat box.

Step 4 – Choose an Occupation

Now that we have attributes, we can decide what we want our Investigator to do for a living. That is where an Occupation comes in. This is, again, selected from a table. Click on the Occupations icon on the right side of the Fantasy Grounds desktop, and you should see a fairly extensive list open up. If you have the Investigators Guide and the Keepers Guide loaded, you might see duplicates of many of them, as they list them from each source. To avoid this, choose a book in the Group dropdown at the top of the list. If both Keepers and Investigators are available, you will see more occupations if the Investigator Handbook is selected.

Even with just the Investigator handbook loaded, this will be a long list. At the bottom, notice you can advance to a second page. There are a lot to choose from. Clicking on each dot lets you open each one to read it. Now in Call of Cthulhu, each Occupation is basically a list of eight skills associated with that Occupation, and a suggested Credit Rating range for a character of that profession. That is nine items you will be spending points on in the future. But more on that in a bit.

For now, you want to find the profession you want, then drag it to the Occupation field on the character sheet. But where does that live? On your character sheet, click on the Personal tab. It should be the fourth one down on the right side of your Character Sheet, right above Notes. Choose the profession you want from the list, then drag it’s grey dot to the field here, and it should auto populate.

While we are here, you can also go ahead and fill in basic personal details if you like. Gender, age (which does matter in this game), height, and other personal data. Now what isn’t very well documented is the next step we have to take. Once the Occupation is in the correct field, close any Occupation window you might have open at this point. If you read the Occupation (you did read your Occupation, right?), you should have noticed it listed which skills were included, but often there were blanks and areas for stats and calculation. Things you couldn’t modify at all, so it all seemed very unfriendly.

Now that we have our profession selected, and no screen open for it, click on the grey dot next to our profession on the character sheet, specifically the one on our sheet. When it opens up again, attached to our character sheet, we will now see drop downs for skill selections, and EDU values and such auto populated. This is how we fully assign an Occupation to our character and lock in our basic skill selections.

There may be a few other dropdowns to select on this screen, and each should be fairly self explanatory, even if you aren’t exactly sure how they apply just yet. Worth noting however, if something like Fighting or Firearms is listed in your chosen Occupation, ensure you type in the exact spelling for the specialization you want, or the system won’t know how to give you your base level of that skill, or how to flag it as an actual Occupational skill. Each Occupation is different, so some have you select an attribute to base some of your skill selections on, some there is no choice and it auto assigns. Just choose the higher stat whenever you have a choice and you will be fine.

Step 5 – Skills and Skill Points

Now that our Occupation is selected and locked in, we need to actually assign our points to our skills. In Call of Cthulhu, skills (like our attributes) are a number that is typically between 0 and 100. Yeah, if attributes are 0, that’s bad. Real bad. But many skills, things you have no experience with, will be at 0. Many skills have a basic default value, representing the fact that many things people have at least some chance of accomplishing, even without any specific training. Everyone can try to be quiet, thus everyone has a base Stealth value.

Using stealth as an example, everyone (every Investigator at least) has a base chance to try to be quiet at 20. That means when a Stealth check is called for, you need to roll 20% or less on d100 to succeed. Many skills have a basic default value, but many more start at 0.

But if we continue on the stealth, for those new to Call of Cthulhu and the Basic RolePlaying System, when you roll you can have three levels of success. This can also be three targets you need to hit, depending on what you are doing and what roll type the Keeper calls for. It is helpful to understand this before the next step when we actually assign skill points.

The three levels of success, or targets, are a standard success, a Hard success, and an Extreme success. The way we get these target values is based on our main score in a skill. While the skill value is the target for a Standard success, the target for a Hard success is half that value, rounded down. So our basic Stealth example, which starts at 20% as a Standard target, has a Hard target number of 10%.

Next is the Extreme success target, which is one fifth of your main score in a skill. So with our Stealth of 20%, the target for an extreme success is 4%. Not much of a chance, but hey, it is a chance nonetheless. And if you do roll this low, this game has options for a Critical Success on rolling a 1%. Yeah, you can also critically fail, but we will leave that up to your Keeper to explain when that joyous event happens.

Now the reason I wanted to go into a bit of detail here is to point out a few things. First, when we assign our value to a skill on our character sheet, the Hard and Extreme scores automatically calculate, and show in the two smaller squares next to the main skill value. Easy. Not only that, when you roll that skill (by double clicking on it’s value, or dropping that value into the chat window), it will not only roll and show you the result, but it will also list if that qualifies as a Hard or Extreme success roll.

But how do we actually increase these skills at character creation? Now that we have an Occupation assigned, that section at the top of the Skills tab will have some numbers populated for us. It lists points spent, with Occ, Pers and … well… Spent. These are the types of points we have available to us. Occupation is calculated based on which profession you selected for your Investigator, and the point total should be showing up top since we haven’t spent any yet. The next, Pers, is Personal skills. That is normally two times your Intelligence score. The third value is used for Pulp campaigns typically as a bonus to make you dashing action heroes.

Now that we have these values, we need to spend them on our skills. On your Skills tab, click on the edit button. In Fantasy Grounds that is normally that little round icon that is Brown/Red with a White diagonal Slash in it. It will open the skill list in the Edit mode, where each skill is now on its own line, and there are three columns of boxes you can type in.

In this list, when you type a number under one of the three columns, the total will automatically subtract from the running total at the top of the column under which you typed the value. In the Example above, when the 25 was typed next to Charm, in its first column, 25 points were subtracted from the Occ box at the top of that column.

Three things are important to know while we do this. First are those red boxes on the left of some of those skills. Those Skills may look familiar. Those check boxes indicate that skill was one of our Occupational skills, and those are the only skills we can spend points from the first column on. You can still also spend Personal skill points on the same skill, and both of these numbers add to the base default value of each skill. Your Keeper will have to determine if there is an upper limit to how high a skill can be during character creation (this is often 75).

Another important thing to know is how to add skills to this list. Some skills aren’t listed by default, because not everyone will have them. Some are incredibly rare. Some are specialized versions of group skills like Languages, or Sciences, or specific Weapon skills. Each of those can be accessed by the Blue Dots across the top of this tab. Each dot is a different type skill group.

Ln – This is add Language

Ar – This is add an Arts & Crafts skill

Ft – This is add a Fighting skill

Sc – This is add a Science skill

Fr – This is add a Firearms skill

Third thing to know is that the Green Dot lets you add a completely custom skill. And the Red Dot with a Vertical White Line to the right of an item in the list allows you to delete it. Once you have assigned your points, click the Edit List button at the top again to stop editing the list, and this tab will revert back to its normal playing state with all your skill values calculated and in place.

Step 6 – Back Story

Hey, remember that Table list we opened a while ago? Well, if you closed it, go ahead and open it again, and select the Personal tab on your character sheet. We are going to roll on the Background tables listed there to generate some interesting story elements for our Investigator. Sure, all of this can be done manually, and much of it can (and should) be modified by you and your Keeper, but using these tables we can generate some items very quickly as a springboard for ideas to modify later.

With the table open, this time we will click to open each one for each category as we work down our character sheet. Simply open the table that relates to the field you are on, and click the little grey die symbol at the top left of the table screen that opens. This will roll the appropriate dice for that table, look up the result, and paste that result to the Chat window.

Now you simply click and drag that text from the Chat window and drop it on the correct field on the Personal tab of the Character Sheet. Text is very easy to drag and drop in Fantasy grounds, and this makes procedures like this very easy.

Step 7 – Equipment

Rounding out our character, you can open the Equipment tables and directly drag and drop items your Investigator may have right to the Inventory tab. Your Occupation will dictate what makes sense, as well as your Keeper making some campaign decisions for you. There are a few items that actually have some other features once dragged to your character however, these being Weapons and Armor. Once they are assigned to your character, you will notice that it will update on the Main Investigator tab. This gives you a quick reference to these items for combat.

Also, at the bottom of the Main tab, there is a little button that is easy to miss named Mini. If you click this, a quick reference window for your weapons will open up so you can keep this visible while you may be reading another tab on your Character Sheet. It lists what weapon or attacks you have, what the target roll is for that attack, what the damage roll will be for a success, and also a little checkbox to indicate whether your Damage Bonus may apply. It is a useful little window for those of you who plan to try to fight the unspeakable horrors and die.

How to Play in Fantasy Grounds

So that pretty much finishes our Investigator. But before you run off to die… err… save the world, here are a few other useful tips.

First, use the Notes tab on the Character sheet. In this game, when you experience things for the first time, you may lose Sanity. But no matter how many times you encounter the same thing, there is a limit to how much Sanity you can lose for that exact same creature. In order to track this, keep a running list on your own Character sheet. Your Keeper can view and update your character, so they can help you maintain this, but it is pretty important to know.

At this time there is no automation for how we reduce the numbers tracked on this, but who knows, by the time you read this maybe a Experiences tab with Automation already exists. But for now, type out each creature and ask your Keeper how to track those points.

Speaking of things that aren’t yet automated, when you successfully make a Skill roll, on your Characters Skill tab, there will be a small box to the left of the Skill. Go ahead and tick that off. Again, the Keeper can help you with this also, but they have a lot to control, so if you can help track your own character successes, it will be a great help. If you succeeded with the help of some Luck points, or benefitted from a Bonus die, you don’t get to check this box.

Right now, there is no automated way to actually do the Investigator Development phase, and roll each of these to see if you gain a skill advance. Again, maybe by the time you read this it may be automated, but for now we are doing it manually. Just check the box and let your Keeper guide you to when you may need that. And no matter how many times you succeed with a skill, you only ever check that box once. After the development phase you will clear all these.

There is also a little icon that looks like a Blood Drop next to the button for Bonus and Penalty dice. Without getting into too much detail, just know that you click on that when the Keeper tells you that your damage roll will be an Impale.

Whew, that’s a lot. But hopefully this helps with creating an Investigator and gets your game started a bit more smoothly. The actual gameplay is pretty streamlined for Call of Cthulhu. As long as your Keeper is fairly well versed in the rules, there is not much for a player to know other than dragging or clicking on Attribute or Skill value to make their rolls, dragging damage rolls to the target on the map, and ticking off that sweet sweet sanity until they die.