The Darkness Beneath the Hill

Skill Checks

For standard skill checks, the first thing I want to know is what your goal is, what you are trying to achieve? In the instance here, of Library Use, are you looking for something specific, like history of the house or of the Winscott family, or slavery in the area? Or something else?

Each skill check has a difficulty, standard, hard (50% of your skill) and extreme (1/5 of skill). Most rolls are standard but sometimes a hard or extreme success can give you something extra. A roll of 01 is always a crit and 100 is always a fumble (if your skill level is below 50, a fumble is 96-100)

In some instances I may give you a bonus or penalty die. In these instances, you roll an additional d10 for the 100's , so bonus you take the best result and a penalty you take the worst result. With something like a Library check, you might charm the librarian to help you (using a social skill) or have another investigator help instead of making their own roll.

In terms of how you make the roll, you seem to have figured it out, using the "Add New Roll" below the post. CoC is not supported by the newer auto skill roll system (anyone playing 5e games will be able to use that) so we enter manually, writing the skill name and the dice roll. If you can, it helps me if you write your skill level next to the skill name, as Max did, to save me digging into 6 character sheets.

As always, if you have questions, shout out.

Note spending Luck on skill rolls is a double edged sword. There are occaisions when you might need to roll luck, so if you spend it all, things might be problematic down the road. It's also worth knowing that if I call for a group Luck roll, we take whoever has the lowest luck for the roll.

Rhode Island was one of the most active Northern colonies in the slave trade, controlling over half of the trade in all America. Newport was the most important Rhode Island port, but Providence was also greatly involved. Despite the emancipation began during the Revolution, the ownership of slaves continued until the 1840s. Originally, the slaves were primarily sold in the West Indies or brought back to Rhode Island to work on its own plantations. When Congress gave the trade an expiration of 1806, Rhode Island served the hungry slave markets of the South, shipping as many slaves as they could, as quickly as they could. Conditions for their human cargo, already poor, quickly deteriorated.
John Brown was tried in 1796 for violating the slave-trade laws, but he was found not guilty. A year later, he was tried again, and his slave ship, Hope, was confiscated. The Brown family of Providence had been successfully involved in the slave trade for decades, becoming one of the region’s most prominent mercantile and political families. Rhode Island University was renamed Brown University in honor of their donations.
Over the years, the discovery of drainage tunnels and bricked-over cold-storage rooms under some of the houses on College Hill have stoked speculation that they were once used to smuggle slaves into Providence after the laws against the slave trade were passed. In 1901, a cornerstone and nearby tunnel was rediscovered during renovations on the house of John Brown. The stone was inscribed with Brown’s name and a date of 1786 and appears to have stood at the entrance of a large tunnel running towards Benefit Street. It was wide enough for two grown men to crawl through. While the head architect dismissed it as a drainage conduit, the tunnel’s discovery revived rumors that it had been used to smuggle slaves.