morganhua

I just added some period bridges.  The collapsed bridge is a period 1920s bridge, but the sign and cars on it aren't, but looks representative of the bridge collapse on day 3.

I fish with dynamite.  :-)

I'm getting ready to run my 2nd session and 1st night at the Maclearan Farm.  It's interesting how crowded the farm is with all the PCs and NPCs.  I've added pictures of the telephone, outhouse, flowerbed, collapsed barn and sugar maple forest for flavor.

Disorganized Play?  (Yes, I'm kidding, but it is Chaos-ium).  

I put the NPC portraits in my google drive and I edited my first post to include the link to the drive.  I may have already edited some of the pictures to a smaller size (3" width).  You should be able to find the larger non-contact sheet version of the portraits in the linked drive.

Also since Blaine is the bad guy and is trying to get warm bodies to the Mi-Go, he'll lie to the students about the previous expedition and gloss over what happened.  He'll cover up anything that would prevent him from getting students to go on the expedition.  His whole goal is to feed people to the Mi-Go and get Devine back.

I've played and run CoC for at least 8 years.  From my experience, there's no power curve for PCs.  e.g. they don't pick up oodles of magic items, gain hit points, massive tomes of arcane lore, etc.  So, a PC from one campaign can easily be transferred to another.  They may have more skill points or Cthulhu mythos, but they're probably lacking in SAN. Actually what happens is that Player knowledge increases and they learn about specific monsters and what to do and what not to do.  They get more cautious and they investigate more before jumping to conclusions, but that is an increase in Player knowledge vs PC knowledge.

Chaosium has called "A Time to Harvest" Organized Play.  But what I think IMHO is that it is mainly a marketing ploy for CoC 7th.  But I love it.  Free scenarios for us to run and support for it.  And a platform for Keepers and Players to get excited about CoC.  Yes, it's not D&D Organized Play or Pathfinder Organized Play.

Call of Cthulhu is an investigative game.  The more red herrings, complexity of subplots, etc, the longer the scenario is.  To have a scenario run in 2 hours or 4 hours means that the scenario most likely is very streamlined and for Veteran players too straight forward and easily solved.  I for one like complex clue trails and I love to surprise my players. So, for me, I want long scenarios that take 8  or more hours to complete.

When I run a long campaign, only one or two PCs make it from the beginning to the end.  Most wind up dead or permanently insane (including replacement characters).  The survivors are generally damaged goods.  So, I'm not too worried about PCs being transferred from another campaign.  But I would be worried if the PCs show up with Monty-Haul magic items, spells, and books.  I would either disallow the PC or kill them (or drive insane) in the first scene as you can't really carry the Necronomicon with you without serious consequences.  e.g. See Ash vs. The Evil Dead.

So, I would say players used to D&D or Pathfinder Organized Play, should not expect the same type of Organized Play from Call of Cthulhu.  CoC is an entirely different beast.

I started them meeting right before getting in the cars and trucks and didn't tell them of the previous field trip until they were on their way - and told them about the death and two disappearances.  I assume when they return to Arkham at the end of Episode 1, they'll research about the previous expedition in Episode 2.  Basically, I didn't give them enough time to do extensive research on the previous field trip.  I mean why would you for an extra credit field trip?  And if you did get scared off, then you've removed yourself from the adventure.  Sort of a lose-lose proposition.  Now, if one was a friend of the missing or dead students, then there is some reason to some research beforehand, but I would severely limit the info as any nasty rumor would kill the field trip. I would assume the recordings by Devine are under lock and key and not easily accessible.

Actually, guns do less damage (no strength damage and min damage with an impaling weapon which guns are) than an improvised weapon to the Mi-Go.  So, It's actually to their detriment.  One player brought a rifle because he's a biologist and wanted to shoot birds to bring back specimens which seemed reasonable to me.  Of course, the player didn't tell me this until he started shooting out the back of the truck on the way to Cobb's Corners.  That brought the convoy to a screeching halt.  Blaine made the student put the rifle away.  During character creation I did mention that players could belong to the wrestling team (for Brawling), shooting club (rifle), etc.  So, it was not beyond the realm of possibilities.

Just finished my first session.  I ran the game online for 4-1/4 hour session for 6 players, we only got through the 1st day.

1/2 hour was spent on technical issues.  There's always technical issues with new players and audio and game board problems.

1-1/2 hour going over CoC 7th rules and character generation, including connections to the other NPCs.  We did not do any short spotlights on early life at Miskatonic U. 

2 hours roleplaying in the car and truck as they got to know the other NPCs and explored Cobb's Corners's NPCs.  The only NPCs they didn't meet were the Karner's, the town drunk, and the hired truck driver.  Session ended with them heading back to the Farmhouse from Cobb's Corners for the evening.  They discovered Jason Haggerty's drawing (and actually purchased it from him) and took Handouts 3 from the school house.  So, they're now very paranoid about the school children and killer trees. And Amanda Wells was asked to find Folklore books in the library and we know how well that's going to turn out.  :-)

Ah, thanks for the clarification, then I would recommend that skills shouldn't be listed in the colleges and schools, that's confusing.

Ah, then there's a disconnect between the Rules and Scenario.  Because those skills are listed as possible skills in the college.  From my reading, I assumed focuses in (parens) are skills the student MUST take as their 3 fields of study in their selected college, and they must pick at least one of the two in the 1st paragraph associated with their college (Humanities major: Anthropology or English; Sciences major: Metallurgy or Geology).

Generated one PC and ran into some issues on base % for skills not listed in Investigator's Handbook.

I made up the following base %s:

Antiquities Classics 1%

Fine Arts 5%

Music 5%

Geography 1%

Classic and Modern Languages 1%

Philosophy 1%

Religion 10%

All the unlisted sciences: 1%

Are these base %s ok?

Heads up.  I ran into an issue with new players generating PCs.  Almost all of them only have the Quick-Start guide.  It's over generous in giving out skill %.  So, I decided to use the Investigator's Guide for character generation instead.  And using the Quick-Start guide's pre-gen characteristics if they want to setup their characters offline (I'm running an online game).

I personally like longer games.  At conventions, I like to run 4 - 8 hr games.  I understand your concerns, but for me a 4 hr scenario for a long campaign reduces the complexity of the scenario and reduces the enjoyment level.  A 4 hr scenario generally means a very simple story and resolution such as the scenario Dead Light.  I like the complexity of A Time to Harvest, so far.  There's enough stuff going on to keep the players guessing and even veteran players who know all the monsters backwards and forwards.

After reading the scenario I ran into some issues and had to solve them.

1.  A keepers we're asked to have the players create backstory connections between the new PCs and the NPCs.  But we're told not to have any between PCs and Robert Blaine or Jason Trent.  Well, asking the players to generate connections, but then telling them you can't have one between them and those two NPCs sort of tips your hand.  So I came up with the alternate method.  Ask them to roll 1d8 and use the following lookup table:

Roll 1d8 for backstory connection (friend, enemy, rival?):
1. John Jeffrey - Missing friend - previous expedition
2. Boyd Patterson - Dead friend - previous expedition
3. Clarissa Thurber - beautiful and charming chemistry major, unattached
4. Roderick Block -- large and friendly football hero and geography major
5. Louis Gibbons -- chatty botany major, pre-med, piano player
6. Harold Higgins -- class clown, geology major, sings
7. William Noakes -- bookish anthropology major
8. Terrence Laslow -- snobbish bore, history and psychology major

This way, they have no way of telling that Robert Blaine and Jason Trent aren't on the list.  I decided to have them only roll 1d8 instead of rolling twice just in case they happen to roll all the numbers and can infer who's missing.  The other option is have them all roll the initial 1d8 and have a few PCs roll a second 1d8 afterwards if you think they would benefit from an additional connection.

2.  Seating chart for 2 cars and truck on the way to Cobb's Corner.  I wanted to have the PCs pick seats on the long ride to Cobb's Corner, so they can role play idle chit chat on the way there.  It took some work to figure out who's sitting where.  Here were my choices:

Car 1:  (driver) Terrence Laslow, (passenger seat next to driver) available for a PC as no NPCs likes Laslow, (backseats) Robert Blaine and Clarissa Thurber (since Robert will definitely sit in the car as expedition leader and also he would keep Clarissa Thurber near him, also he knows no one likes Laslow, so he hopes the remaining passenger seat stays empty).

Car 2: (driver) William Noakes, other 3 passenger seats are available for PCs.

Truck: (driver) Roderick Block, (passenger seat next to driver) available for a PC, (back of truck) Jason Trent in far corner by himself, Louis Gibbons and Harold Higgins will sit next to each other as they're buddies, 3 other bench seats will be available for PCs.  If you want to force some PCs into the other cars, you can put more equipment in the truck and reduce the number of available seats.

Here's a copy of one of my game tables and it initial seating of students in the 2 cars and truck.  Ready for the new students to take a seat.

I decided to pick some famous Rat Pack actors for the doomed students -- also it's short hand for me to figure out who's who and their personalities.

Here's just a contact sheet of NPCs.  It's impossible to really match the scenario's descriptions, so I picked what I thought were interesting or representative.  I have individual pictures so they can be shown online at the appropriate moment.

I just spent yesterday doing google searches and getting pictures for various objects, locations, and NPCs.  Not sure if people want them or not. They'll be ok for private play, but I haven't done checks on copyright, etc.

I'll put a couple of pictures below. 

Here's a link to my google drive folder with most of the pictures I'm using: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1hjMXKBkPW6dXVhNVZyVF80TEU&usp=sharing

Ep 1, page 16, col 1, para 6, line 33 (excluding blank lines), (right after Spells) Missing text: "Sanity Loss: 0/1D6 sanity points to see a mi-go soldier."

I noticed that the CoC 7th Quick-Start pdf doesn't have the Student Occupation.  In order to generate PCs, I'll need to give them the Student template from the Investigator's Handbook in order to create PCs.  Best if this template was included in the A Time to Harvest pdf.