morganhua

My pdf copy of HotOE has updated pre-gen investigators on p.97-100, Book 2. Book 2, p. 94 (spell description) Shadow Void Book 2, p.96 (spell description) Dance of the Gelin, Golden Cage of Desire CoC 7th, Keeper Rulebook p.249: Chant of Thoth p.254: Dominate. p.255, Eldar Sign p.265: Voorish Sign p,260: Mental Suggestion. The text is almost the same as Mesmerize in 6th edition, but with updated details. CoC 6th, p.243 Steal Life. Spell costs 8 magic points, 1d20 SAN. Target must be within sight and hearing range. Caster must overcome target's magic points on resistance table. Each combat round spell is cast, drain 1 pt each of STR, CON, DEX, POW, APP from target. Each point drained, the caster becomes a 1 week younger. e.g. 8 rounds of drain = 40 weeks younger. The target withers, turns gray, and flakes away. At the end of the spell, the target becomes a horrid dry husk which costs 0/1d6 SAN to see. If spell is not cast on the night of the full moon, caster does not gain youth, but victim still dies. If caster is slain before the victim dies, the spell cancels and the lost points are returned to the target. p.247 Voice of Ra. Spell requires 5 magic pts, 1 SAN. 2 hrs to cast. Lasts 24 hrs. Adds 1d10 (x5 for 7th Ed) App to caster and increases 20% to caster's Bargain, Credit Rating, Fast Talk, Persuade, and Psychology skills.

I'd run HotOE (1923) and then aTtH (1930's). If HotOE characters survive, then they could be only 7+ years older. With aTtH completely released, I'd say it would have taken me less than 6 months to run with weekly sessions of 4 hrs each. But my group skipped the Mi-Go base and the Cobbs Corners finale. HotOE is taking me almost 2 years to run, but I'm running it once every 2 weeks at 4 hrs each session, so it would take about 1 year if at the same pace as aTtH. I'd start aTtH with students, but all replacement characters can be survivors from HotOE. You can make HotOE survivors employees of FOC.

The Mi-Go listed had Spore guns, but with the deep sea diving suits, the Spore wouldn't affect the PCs. I also was worried that the Lightning guns could set off the Pasquallium, so my Mi-Go had to go hand-to-hand. Also being dropped on the moon from a high altitude with such low gravity wouldn't do as much damage as on earth. So, basically the Mi-Gos were nerfed on the moon. The only positive thing was that physical attacks can damage the suits.

Total Time: 3.5 hrs. I started with the characters right after Episode 5, fleeing Cobbs Corners. While heading south back towards Massachusetts along the road, some FOC trucks drove by, but the PCs decided to not trust them and continued hiding and walked to the next town. Once in town, one PC, an FBI agent, called his superior and was told some disaster had happened at Cobbs Corners. He blabbed about the supernatural things and was fairly incoherent. Luckily his partner was more level headed and got ambulances sent to their location. As they waited for the ambulance, the incoherent FBI agent stood outside and pretended to be a tree. Another convoy of FOC trucks drove by and one of the trucks stopped when they spotted the PC. FOC were given photos of the PCs and were told to look out for them in case they may need help. The FBI agent denied being the person in the picture and the FOC convoy continued on its way. Later the ambulances arrived. Once in the hospital, Leon Pasqualle contacted the PCs and only 3 decided to go on the Moon Mission. I let the other 2 players play Lang and Riley. While at the hospital, there's an earthquake and the PCs are told that the Mi-Go base was destroyed, whether accidentally or as an attack by the Mi-Go, they're not quite sure. I didn't like having the gate convert the PCs, so I made them wear deep sea diving suits with self contained air. Most of the moon mission went without a hitch. I decided not to throw at them any random encounters. The PCs never used grenades, so I never got to hit them with accidental damage. The PCs got really lucky on stealth rolls and were able to plant the explosives without an issue (actually Lang had to burn Luck to figure out where to plant the explosives, apparently Lang and Riley don't have any of the required skills to plant the bomb effectively and had to use 1/2 INT). Once planted, I asked them how many rounds until the explosives went off. They picked 10 rounds. A pair of Mi-Go spotted the PCs and gave chase. The PCs killed the two Mi-Go (I forgot about the min damage from bullets) and the PCs got so far ahead of the Shoggoths, that the only damage they took was shrapnel from the explosion and all the PCs escaped. Without luck spends, probably Lang would have been killed. A small issue: The Spot Hidden % for the Mi-Go (40%) were on p.15 and not in the Appendix. After the game, I opened up the floor for questions about what happened in the whole campaign and answered some mysteries. One idea the players had was that maybe a towns person from Cobbs Corners should have approached the PCs to help his wife being help captive in the center of town. Then they would have entered Cobbs Corners in Ep. 5 instead of avoiding it.

In my game, Alexis teaches the PCs (who were willing) to keep the "organ" train running, so they can return home. Two PCs learned how to "open" a pocket universe, but for future use, they must fashion or have a train set with them. The two PCs who learned the spell lost San as they played choo-choo with the bloody organs for 1d50 rounds. I didn't tell them the San loss was for casting the spell, they thought it was for playing choo-choo with the bloody organs. :-) But the two PCs have never used the spell since.

Number of people needed for a specific ritual is not required in aTtH. But some of the episodes are potentially deadly and the more PCs the better for some PC survival and continuity.

My group hated the Dream Land optional scenarios and the Dark Ages optional scenario. The Doom Train is short and is very atmospheric, but not needed. My favorite part is the optional London (Red Fez) 1893 scenario. It is quite long, not sure you can run that in one session.

For my gaming groups: A Time to Harvest took 6 months to run. Horror on the Orient Express will took 2 years to run. aTtH had a higher death rate than HotOE. Depends on whether your players are OK with frequent PC death.

I started with 6 (5 new to CoC 7th),went down to 4 (lost two players permanently by end of Ep 2), and I'm at 5 now (added one new veteran CoC player Ep 3). But due to random life issues and scheduling, I generally get 4 to 5 players showing up. I think the sweet spot is 4 consistent players. If there are no shows, then you'll need to add extra players to fill the roster.

I'd let them, but have the mind-swapped students be wary that it is a trap to reveal their whole plot. Have the player be "played." Have the mind-swapped students send the student on errands that helps them complete their plans, but not reveal the plan to the student. Also have the mind-swapped students slowly inquire as to whether the student would like to travel to other worlds and learn eldritch information. See what the student's reaction is. See if the mind-swapped students will trust him or not. If they trust him and the student makes it to the end of the episode, he's going to have screw-top brain surgery.

I'm going to be running Ep 6 this Thursday. We'll see how the players react to it. Also I hate the gates modifying the body so they can breath on the moon. I'm putting them in deep sea diving suits with a self-contained air supply.

No. There was great aversion to going there. I tried twice to get them there, but their reaction was run away. The Dark Young was just too dangerous for them to confront. They wanted to get the farthest away from the Dark Young as possible. I was only able to capture two NPCs and the PCs were willing to let them be taken away. Maybe if I captured a PC, they might have tried something, but I'm not sure. Then you might be stuck with a dead or missing PC which the Keeper forced, which seems unfair.

Total Time for Episode Five: 2.5 hrs. In Ep 4, the party had split up into two groups, but after running them separately, both groups did the identical thing and headed towards Cobb's Corner and then skirted it going south along the river, so I let the split party join up. I let them run into "The Stalemate" and at one point a PC was going to attack the Farmer, but by then the Children summoned a Dark Young and ordered the Dark Young to attack the Farmer and his son. At that point, the PCs just ran away. I then had them run into "Alexandru Cuzra’s Last Stand" where they found Cuzra and they finished destroying the standing stones for him. I then did "The Test" and they actually saved the little girl and her father. They tried to persuade Dr Matherson to climb into the basement (she had the highest climb skill), but a PC critically failed and Dr Matherson was convinced it was a trap. So, the injured PCs tried to climb down and fell into the basement and took some damage even when I gave them a bonus die after one PC made it down. One PC went unconscious. So, I let them pile debris to climb out. Dr Matherson's First Aid brought both the father and the unconscious PC back to consciousness. They then continued away from Cobb's Corner, braving hurricane winds, and I had them run into a Dark Young road block. The trees weren't fallen across the road in the storm, but were standing on it. They skirted that and I had them run into a Red Sign barrier. The PCs risked taking damage, rushing past it, and after a PC and the girl's father fell unconscious, the PCs rescued them, they made it out of that area. With Dr Matherson rendering first aid again to bring the unconscious back to consciousness. Once outside of the storm area, I gave them a spot hidden with a penalty die to spot Shub-Niggurath arriving at Cobb's Corner. Two PCs spotted the arrival of Shub-Niggurath, but made their San checks. One gained an indefinite insanity. Dr Matherson failed (perm insanity) and ran back to Cobb's Corner. They tried to stop her, but failed. In the end, they all took the 1d10+5 San loss for not trying to save Cobb's Corner. 2 PCs gained indefinite insanities from the San loss. I think the issue is there's not a strong enough reason to enter Cobb's Corner. Also two of the PCs were students with no combat skills. Two were FOC hired gunmen who were the driving force for "The Stalemate," "Alexandru Cuzra's Last Stand," "The Test," and rescuing the unconscious PCs. If it were left to the students, they would have just ran away from every situation. The FOC gunmen were braver and more curious and most of the PCs were down to 3 hit points when they ran into the Red Sign (which does 1d3 and then 1 point further away), so there was a good chance they would have gone unconscious trying to pull their compatriots away from it. A player said maybe if a town person came to the PCs to ask for their help, they might have entered Cobb's Corner, but spotting the destruction there, there was no reason to enter the town. Knowing how hard it was to hurt the Dark Young and seeing the slaughter of the FOC military camp told them there was no reason to chance any type of meeting with the Dark Young. Two players did mention Ep 5 reminded them of "The Madman" from the CoC 6th core book and "Alone Against the Flames" the CoC 7th solo adventure.

Oops had typo on the Title. Should be Ep 5, not 6. Thought I couldn't change the Title, but was able to after I reposted with corrected Topic title. Can't find a way to delete old Topic.

Total Time: 2.5 hrs. In Ep 4, the party had split up into two groups, but after running them separately, both groups did the identical thing and headed towards Cobb's Corner and then skirted it going south along the river, so I let the split party join up. I let them run into "The Stalemate" and at one point a PC was going to attack the Farmer, but by then the Children summoned a Dark Young and ordered the Dark Young to attack the Farmer and his son. At that point, the PCs just ran away. I then had them run into "Alexandru Cuzra’s Last Stand" where they found Cuzra and they finished destroying the standing stones for him. I then did "The Test" and they actually saved the little girl and her father. They tried to persuade Dr Matherson to climb into the basement (she had the highest climb skill), but a PC critically failed and Dr Matherson was convinced it was a trap. So, the injured PCs tried to climb down and fell into the basement and took some damage even when I gave them a bonus die after one PC made it down. One PC went unconscious. So, I let them pile debris to climb out. Dr Matherson's First Aid brought both the father and the unconscious PC back to consciousness. They then continued away from Cobb's Corner, braving hurricane winds, and I had them run into a Dark Young road block. The trees weren't fallen across the road in the storm, but were standing on it. They skirted that and I had them run into a Red Sign barrier. The PCs risked taking damage, rushing past it, and after a PC and the girl's father fell unconscious, the PCs rescued them, they made it out of that area. With Dr Matherson rendering first aid again to bring the unconscious back to consciousness. Once outside of the storm area, I gave them a spot hidden with a penalty die to spot Shub-Niggurath arriving at Cobb's Corner. Two PCs spotted the arrival of Shub-Niggurath, but made their San checks. One gained an indefinite insanity. Dr Matherson failed (perm insanity) and ran back to Cobb's Corner. They tried to stop her, but failed. In the end, they all took the 1d10+5 San loss for not trying to save Cobb's Corner. 2 PCs gained indefinite insanities from the San loss. I think the issue is there's not a strong enough reason to enter Cobb's Corner. Also two of the PCs were students with no combat skills. Two were FOC hired gunmen who were the driving force for "The Stalemate," "Alexandru Cuzra's Last Stand," "The Test," and rescuing the unconscious PCs. If it were left to the students, they would have just ran away from every situation. The FOC gunmen were braver and more curious and most of the PCs were down to 3 hit points when they ran into the Red Sign (which does 1d3 and then 1 point further away), so there was a good chance they would have gone unconscious trying to pull their compatriots away from it. A player said maybe if a town person came to the PCs to ask for their help, they might have entered Cobb's Corner, but spotting the destruction there, there was no reason to enter the town. Knowing how hard it was to hurt the Dark Young and seeing the slaughter of the FOC military camp told them there was no reason to chance any type of meeting with the Dark Young. Two players did mention Ep 5 reminded them of "The Madman" from the CoC 6th core book and "Alone Against the Flames" the CoC 7th solo adventure.

For online, I do mostly what mvincent is doing. Readying handouts and finding additional material to cut-and-paste into the game board. I find NPC portraits and pictures of items are very useful in setting the tone. They're also good for the GM and Players as memory devices. If I'm running it in person, then I have to print out all the handouts. For NPC portraits, I print them in a contact sheet and cut them out into large postage stamps. I have some craft scissors that create a nice border for the NPC portraits. If I'm running my own scenario, I have a clipboard with an outline of the scenario for me as a GM, things for me to remember to do, clues, set encounters, etc. When I run a published scenario, I have a hard copy of the scenario. For the progress of a Campaign, I generally keep everything in my head. The Players are in charge of keeping investigator notes. If they get anything wrong, it's their problem. I do give them the correct spelling of names (if there's no NPC portrait with the name underneath). I stop a session at a natural stopping point, so there's nothing to keep track of such as position of PCs, monster HPs, etc. I generally will email a short summary of what happened before (a few sentences) when I send out the next session reminder (two days before the next session). That's mainly for the people who weren't present at the previous session. I also try to phrase it like a "coming attractions" ad to drum up some excitement. Currently, I'm running Horror on the Orient Express, A Time to Harvest, and a TimeWatch campaign. Each game has a different set of players. I keep no notes.

I read Ep 5 and it mainly concerns Cobb's Corner. So, I might try to corral them there. I'll use the preset encounters out in the forest and will let them run into Alexandru Cuzra’s Last Stand. Mrs. Bellweather is too far away, at the other end of the valley, so they won't visit her. They did mention it in the previous session, but decided against it as it takes 1/2 a day to reach her. I'll have to make Cobb's Corner the eye of the storm and see if they head there. I'll have to use Red Signs, Dark Young, and possibly have to kill or injure a few PCs to make them go to Cobb's Corner. I like Stalemate and Test and I'll see if I can shoehorn one or both in before they enter Cobb's Corner.

Session 3, Took 0.5 hours. I attacked the split party PCs with two flying Mi-Go with electric guns. After the first round of attack, the PCs fled and hid in the woods (Mi-Go rolled 98 and totally couldn't find the split party). The PCs went towards Cobb's Corners, noted the Dark Young there, refused to cross the bridge, and headed south along the river. So, probably very near the other group of PCs and I'll be able to unify them for Ep 5.

Session 2. Took 1.5 hours. They decided to find a hillock, a few hundred yards from the FOC military camp, and park their truck in the lee there for the night. They set watch and I made them make luck rolls to see when the Mi-Go and Dark Young come back to clean up stragglers. The PC on watch made a hard listen roll, so I had him notice the rumbling footsteps of the Dark Young approaching. Later, I had them make listen rolls for the buzz of flying Mi-Go. Knowing the danger was approaching, they setup the truck to drive by itself into the woods as a distraction. Two players were absent, so they split the party in two. All the NPCs in one group and the active PCs in another group. In Trail of Cthulhu, there's piggy backing on Stealth which doesn't exist in CoC. I also find that making each PC roll stealth isn't fair, as someone in the group always fails the roll, so instead, I have them make a group Stealth roll, much like the group Luck roll, the player with the lowest Stealth rolls for the whole group. The PCs made a hard Stealth and I rolled a 100 for the NPC group, so they got "captured." The PCs then approached Cobb's Corners again and watched as about a dozen Dark Young destroyed some houses and killed people there. Unwilling to cross the bridge into town, they decided to head south, following the river that skirted Cobb's Corners. The PCs have no intention of trying to rescue the captured PCs and NPCs and decided to just Stealth and move south through the forest. So, the PCs completely avoided the Mi-Go base. I left them on the edge of the river as this is similar to the end of Ep 4 if they had gone to the Mi-Go base. So hopefully, I can bridge Ep 4 and Ep 5 easily. I've decided that when the two absent players return, I'll run their split party and see if they really got captured, killed, or escaped. This happened near the FOC military camp, so lethal force might be used here vs the Farmhouse.

Session 1. Took 4 hours, but will probably take more to finish. I decided to leave the Zoogs and John Jeffreys and the Dream Gate from Ep 1 in the game. And not have FOC clear them out as per instructions in Ep 3. I did drop the kidnapped girl sub-plot. I did this for pacing reasons as the players didn't really follow up on That Crazy Old Farmer nor Looking for the Widow Cratchett, so I needed something for them to do. On day 2, I had Morrison and Drake hike to the fake coordinates the swapped Geology students used for the meteorite crater. Some PCs went with them. No crater was found. They hiked around some more thinking that the coordinates were possibly inaccurate. One day 3, they went in force into The Enchanted Woods and killed a Zoog and the Moon Beast did hurt a PC before they killed it. They put John Jeffreys out of his misery, as per his request, and I shut down the Dream Gate, but left an inactive gate made of Pasquallium as a clue. On day 4, While Dr. Matherson examined the Pasquallium gate and excavated Jeffrey's body, the PCs finally visited the Widow Cratchett. On the 4th night, I had the Dark Young attack even though they hadn't spoke with Cuzra since the PCs already had drawings of evil trees from the children from Ep 1. I think there's enough of a connection between the children and the Dark Young without Cuzra's clues. The PCs mainly fled and let Morrison and Drake get captured by the Dark Young. The PCs did hear gunfire and explosions in the distance (the FOC military camp being attacked). I had the FOC soldiers show up who wanted to follow the kidnapped Morrison, but the PCs declined to help. The soldiers did tell the PCs where the military camp was. The PCs decided to return to Cobbs Corners and I had them do a Spot Hidden and notice Dark Young attacking Cobbs Corners (trees moving around Cobbs Corners which mainly had single story houses). They then decided to go to the FOC military camp and found the soldiers slaughtered there. That's where we left it.

p. 5, col 2, para 7, line 3. (typo) "Matherson stays behind at the farmhouse to set up of his laboratory and to study the mi-go slime." "of his" should be "her" Inconsistency, p.9 says Emelda isn't home and p.10 says that she is. p. 9, col 2, para 2, lines 10-13. "Unfortunately, Jethro’s bereaved wife, Emelda Cratchett, has been out of town the last few days making arrangements to move in with some relatives." p. 10, col 2, para 3, lines 1-2. "An attractive woman in a conservative black dress greets those knocking... Emelda..."

I didn't bother, I just made them behave differently. That's all that's really needed. Something to show the PCs that the returned ex-PCs are different and sometimes in a big way that can't be explained by drugs or alcohol.

I kept all the brain swapped NPCs and made the ex-PCs brain swapped too. Just make up something for the brain swapped PCs. If you move the brain "tenants" around, you'll have trouble figuring out who's in who's body as Ep 2 isn't very clear about that and you'll get even more confused.

I don't think it really matters. The whole thing about Ep 2 is to show how different the brain swapped characters are. In my game, I tried to make it more subtle, so the PCs had to work a little to figure out something was wrong and the more time they spent with the brain swapped NPCs the more wrongness was apparent. Finally, at one point, a PC (replacement character, not one from Ep 1, who's backstory gave them a relationship with one of the NPCs) approached one of the NPCs and lied about being someone else and the NPC had no clue who the PC was. That was a great WTF moment.

These were mostly new to CoC 7th Ed players and most non-veteran CoC players, so newbie mistakes were made, but I enjoy running for these players since they bring some interesting things to the table as newbies. Some veteran players get into Delta Green mode too easily. These players are staying in character very well for MU college students. In Ep. 2, they missed following the car that was sent to bring back Kerosene and TNT (due to not having a car available) and when the car came back, they looked at the car, but didn't search the trunk and missed finding the equipment for burning down the library. They were so close to finding it too. Also they think staking out the brain swapped students consisted of watching them for about 30 mins at the library. More experienced players would do a real stake out that would take days of watching and following. But these players have more interactions with NPCs and they're pretty amusing. In Ep 3, their main mistakes were breaking up the party into very small groups. This works out when researching, but when staking a place out, they need to have enough people watching and enough fire power if something bad goes down. I think they haven't learned that yet. Also there were some very subtle clues that in Canada the deaths weren't Mi-Go. The description of the dead bodies indicate the sawing of the brain pan is more crude than the Mi-Go high tech method. In my game, I made the scrap of black cloth similar to the black cassock of a priest's. If you read Ep 3 carefully, the black cloth actually matches a jacket in the Charnel House, Bedroom 2. But I would have made it part of the priest vestments and given it as a clue if they had searched Father Dubois's office in the Church. One of his robes in his closet would be missing that piece of cloth, unbeknownst to Father Dubois. Right now, the players think with all the fire power that Abelard is giving them that they're transitioning to Delta Green mode and haven't figured out that they're bait. I haven't given them any indication to the contrary and they expect to kick butt when they return to Cobb's Corners. One player did mention that the students don't have much skill in firearms, but the replacement characters do. Now that the Mi-Go have been revealed, I think they've forgotten about the Spooky children of Cobb's Corners.