joggiwagga

Question - do Chaosium folks want after-game write ups for privately hosted runs?  I've only done them in the past for open sessions at game stores or at conventions.

MUCH EXCITE

I'd like to add in some additional details from a recent personal experience - on the chance that it isn't one person who does everything (the town I grew up in has a population of about 700 for reference), there may be some really really bizarre hours.

I had to get my birth certificate when I started a new job.  The town clerk was only in office one day a week, in the evening (there is a town coordinator who's there M-F during business hours).  The town clerk position uses an aol email account, other official positions in town use accounts with a town domain, gmail, and aol.  If they have an email at all, which many don't. 

You can go weird on this and not necessarily have it be that far from the truth.

When I ran ATtH I had a mix of new players, core players, and replacing of PCs for various reasons.  It honestly worked fine, it was very easy to swap PCs in and out depending on who was present.  Find a connection for the new person to be involved, and allow that new character to discover the weirdness as they go.

That being said, part one of ATtH was very much a 2 session chapter when I've run it.

15 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yup, especially if they don't know the route. You can often end up going in circles around the place you want to get to. 

Yeah, it's still a legit issue in the larger communities, too. I live in Worcester (the second largest city in the state) and there are some dead zones around town, depending on your carrier. 

I live out in Western MA, the town I grew up in still has the options of Dial Up or Satellite... but have fun with reception when you live in the woods.  So... yeah.

It *is* feasible that they ended up stranded in some elbow of nowhere between cities.  We've got a lot of those in MA.  But yeah, not a large area.  However it's also wicked easy to adapt games to modern settings b/c "there's no cell signal" here or "there's no internet" are legit issues in many smaller communities.

I'm working on setting up demos at the library I just started working at!

Question - at some point will we be able to access some of the newer con demo games in rotation (in 6 to 12 months is my guess)?

If you're still looking for play testers I'm wicked happy to do so and have done play testing for other scenarios!

Very nice props!  I'm not going to lie, I'm a little envious!

What I did for the NPCs is I used little character cards I could fold over my GM's screen, showing who was present or grouping them as necessary.

Short version: some of that stuff is relevant to later, and it's always possible the players won't even touch that.  A few of the episode 1 handouts meant for that session I didn't put into play until they return to Cobbs Corner b/c they had utterly ignored those possible plot threads.

Oh that's awesome.  I was looking at PAX East and they don't seem to have any organized Table Top gaming, just a free-for-all gaming room.  I've been toying with contacting them directly and asking if that's actually the case.

On 8/29/2017 at 6:53 PM, Master Fwiffo said:

Good advice Joggiwa!  It is 1920s though I left the exact year up to the keeper, though keeping in line with the Hounds of Tindalos base story, it would be late 29 to early 30.

As for the ending, if I remember correctly Yithians use some sort of machinery to transfer minds - according to the original story, the Yithian inhabiting Peasely built the device before he reversed his mind-swap.  With his original body dead his mind has nowhere else to go.

It might be worth a setting note indicating era if you're intending to put this out for sharing and reuse.  Similarly in the conclusion a note could be made regarding that reasoning as to why he doesn't jump to any of them (though of course, Keepers may make up their own plans of attack).  I need to re-read the base story, I'm more familiar honestly with the short story by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette about them.

OK.  Read it over.  Looks like a fun little romp, some minor typos.

My notes:

When does this game take place?  Modern Era or Gaslamp?  I at first thought that "The Speakeasy" was a bar name, then later saw "speakeasy" with a lowercase first letter and realized it might be 1920s.  I'm guessing its overall 1920s?

The timelines for seeing the body at the site of the death don't work.  The body likely wouldn't be left there for the day or two after discovery for non-police Investigators to learn about it from the papers.  It'd be carted off to a morgue.  Option - the players could have some connection to the "first" victim and be present for the wellness check?  Otherwise, the split in time for people to arrive would be too great if some were cops and some weren't.

An option to keep the bar hint would be to lead to a meeting of academics with special projects?  That could be an early link to some of the other Professors.  Think Chekov's gun.  Could optionally be a Teacher's Lounge or Gentleman's Club (the non-stripclub type).

I feel it's a little optimistic, unless it's heavily stressed, that players will make the math regarding murder rates.  But maybe I have highly distracted players.

For the bit about Alek being neither evil nor insane, I'd drop something about operating on a different, and inhuman, morality.  Otherwise his lack of contrition or regret about killing people is going to seem contrary.

For the Conclusion option where they sacrifice Alek - what is keeping him within the body?  As a Yithian, can't he just leave the body to be murdered and jump again?  I mean, that'd be a fun ending it itself, but one contrary to the narrative option given, so I figured I'd ask.

Players: "We're going to explore [thing]"

Me: "Why would you even think that has any relation to the story?  Did you really just waste an hour with that PC without touching on any of the many hints I have been continually dropping, and instead discussed [most mundane thing ever]?"

Speaking from experience as a GM (tabletop and LARP) as well as someone who runs Escape Rooms, yes, it's good to be careful of including Red Herrings.  Even if you include no red herrings the players will manage to find/create them.

Just saw this today, will look it over and give feedback (at work now so really shouldn't right this minute).  If you get it to a place you like it, and feel like sharing, I believe they're always encouraging folks to add scenarios to the Chaos Library

At ConnectiCon last month I ran this twice, from my report to Dustin:

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For the Necropolis, each time I lost at least one person, but for different reasons.  No one ended up in the treasure room to find the heart, first session they spent a LONG time in the shrine room... ALMOST ended up in the treasure room, and ultimately set everything they could possibly burn on fire.  One of them survived by hiding in the dog mummy space.  Monster got out to terrorize the lands at large.  Other group they actually managed to kill it, but not after one PC was splatted very hard at the start, and then gave that player the option to try and kill the other PCs as the monster himself while I referred the scene.  Went really awesome.

So I guess the monster is a little squishy, on the other hand it one-shot a PC on the first round, and it was just luck that they killed it before it killed them.  The group that killed it I then spun out some really fun and creepy epilogues for, so they survived, but their experiences forever changed their lives.

For what it's worth, I ran the first three sessions of ATtH with a printout of the QSR because I was waiting for the physical book (digital are great for quick text queries, but bad for me to read and learn a system it turns out).

I could have run the rest of the campaign with just the QSR, but it requires making some judgement calls.  I play a more narrative than numbers game in a lot of ways, which means being a little loose with the rules generally can be worked in.

That being said, every time I prep for a demo game and review the rules, I almost always learn something new.  Like I was totally misunderstanding some of the sanity rules (basically, I was being too nice... not that it helped when someone with 65 sanity lost 68 in one go...) and it took me a number of games to get truly comfortable running combat.  So starting with a really strong understanding of the QSR and then growing your understanding with the full rules isn't necessarily a bad thing, it means you have a grasp on the basics and the scenario gives you the structure to tell the story.

What sort of questions, I'm glad to try and help.

What have folks been having fun with when modernizing ATtH?

After a successful run of ATtH at my FLGS, I decided to run it for my friends as a home game, but in a modern setting.

Some things are easy to adapt to, after all, it's not a far stretch for there to be no cell reception in a very rural town in New England, let alone there even being any reasonable internet connection (the town I grew up in has a population of less than 1000, there's cell reception in the very center of town only... and only since a tornado knocked a bunch of stuff down a few years ago, and your internet options are dial-up or gambling with satellite).

My players are attempting to spy on the Mi-Go agents in the library with cheap purchased off Amazon electronic bugs and similar technology, which is makes me have to keep on my feet, but also means I get to have them overhear a lot of random crap because it's a public space.

Other things I get to have fun with, like when dropping hints about the Mi-Go agent from before the Revolutionary War I mention that he REALLY hates Hamilton.  Like seems mortally offended by the musical, and takes special offense to the portrayal of King George.  And well... then this happened and I had to share.

On 4/17/2017 at 7:15 PM, Maaack said:

Thanks for the responses! I posted my scenario to The Chaos Library, now I'm curious...

Who do I turn to for feedback?

What's Chaosium's preferred way of being contacted if I want to make sure I'm not infringing on their copyright?

I know I've been reading and giving feedback on scenarios, so I'll take a look at yours since you seem to be seeking it.

It's more useful than most "hand" prosthetics, which is why hooks are generally more popular than a full "hand"

You'll want to get in touch with the Powers that Be (Mike Mason possibly) for access... but here's the Introduction post for the Chaos Library if this sounds like it would be of interest:

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Welcome to the Chaos Library!

We know many of you have created fun scenarios and hope that you will be willing to share some of them with others in the Cult of Chaos. The Chaos Library is repository of games ready for play and for use by others in the Cult of Chaos.

The scenarios here are written by and for Cult of Chaos members and include short 1 or 2 hour demo games up to full 3-4 hour ‘convention’ style scenarios. From time to time, Chaosium will also post scenarios for use by Cult of Chaos members.

Please read the following information before submitting a scenario.

Copyright

Authors contributing to the Chaos Library retain copyright of their contributions. Please make sure whatever you submit includes the line: "copyright 201X by author name." Please also include the phrase: "Call of Cthulhu is the trademark of Chaosium Inc." after the copyright notice.

Distribution

We request that anything in the Chaos Library is not distributed outside of the Cult of Chaos unless the author(s) give permission, which should be clearly stated at the front of the scenario. 

Scenarios

All scenarios (and other materials) must be for the latest edition of the rules (Call of Cthulhu 7th edition). If you have something excellent written for an earlier edition of the rules and do not wish to update it yourself, you are welcome to put out a request for a fellow cultist volunteer to update the material for you prior to submitting it to the Chaos Library (use the Cult of Chaos forum for this purpose).

Inappropriate Material

If a scenario is in poor taste or if we receive complaints about a scenario’s contents, we’ll take a look and decide whether the scenario in question should be removed. Please read the Designing a Scenario - Useful Tips guidedance at the top of the Chaos Library about creating scenarios for use by the Cult of Chaos in terms of running games in public places like game stores, libraries, schools, and so on.

Giving Feedback

We hope that by sharing your scenarios, you’ll get useful feedback that will, in turn, help to develop your writing and design. When giving feedback please be critical and positive - negative criticism does not help nor foster a sense of community, and such posts are likley to removed by the moderators. Feedback about how a scenario has been received by players is welcome, as are comments, suggestions, and questions about the scenarios.

 

How to Submit Your Scenario

Each scenario should be posted to this forum with the following information:

1. Subject header: Title of the scenario
2. Text box:  please state the following information at the top of the text box:
3. Tile of the scenario
4. Setting: (Gaslight, 1920s, Modern, etc.)
5. Play length: (1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, etc.)
6. Number of players: (1, 2, 4, 6 - you might state a min and max number of players)
7. Pre-Generated Players Characters? (yes or no)
8. Overview: (a short and pithy summary of the scenario's plot)
9. Then, attach the scenario as a PDF or Word file.

 

That's pretty awesome.

On 3/20/2017 at 11:06 AM, milkomix said:

I still think going insane is a huge part of the game though, both as a source of fun and a storytelling tool. I suggest keepers to encourage it. I had a game with a bunch of investigators with mammoth SAN scores and it was no fun at all.

Oh definitely.  It's all a balance to some extent.