trevlix

Very cool. Any chance you have pics on how your area is set up with the projector and such? Would love to see it!

So does that mean that episode 2 will be April 30 or May 30?

Since some keepers (like me) have to schedule when our games are in advance, is there any way we can get a schedule of when future episodes will be released?

I did not throw this at my players, but I'm curious if other keepers had their PCs fight the moon beast? My PCs never had any weapons, other than an improvised shovel. If I had thrown them up against the moon beast, I suspect it would have been a slaughter as its unlikely they'll have any real weapons to defend themselves. Curious what other keepers have done.

Ah yeah - one last thing. The town hall is marked on the map (as location #1), but its not described. Is that an oversight or on purpose?

So I was able to run all of session 1 in 4.5 hours. I only had 3 players, which I think helped. I removed a lot of the dream gate subplot and shortened it to 2 days total (mostly bc the players were moving along at a brisk pace). In the end, they still had the majority of the clues they needed and got them through roleplaying and not me just handing the clues to them. I do want to say that the reason I was hoping for shorter episodes is that in playing at the gaming pub I play at, there is no guarantee I'll get the same players each month. Being able to finish in one session means that its easy for new players to just jump right in. In this particular episode, I didn't feel there were any real good stopping mid-points where I and the players would feel satisfied in stopping and ready to pick up at the next game. Overall, I enjoyed the scenario and am honestly looking forward to running it at its normal pace. I'm thinking of doing so via an online game. A couple criticisms of the scenario. First, there is a lot for one Keeper to handle. There are a lot of NPCs to keep straight - and this will only continue to grow. I hope this is addressed in later episodes, because keeping track of 8 NPC students and the multitude of townfolk was not easy. I made due and focused more on the townsfolk and fortunately the PCs went along with this. They were happy to distance themselves from the rest of the group and go off collecting stories on their own so it all worked out. Another thing...the Gismend River is mentioned multiple times - in a clue, in The Accident, etc. However, its not on any maps that I could find. I initially thought that it was the Deerfield River from the town map, but realized in game it was not. I still made it work, but with something so prominent in the game, I would have liked to see a better map of the area with it on it. Outside of that, the game ended well. My PCs have no clue what is going on, lost some SAN, and are disturbed by the town. A successful game in my book.

You've put up some amazing resources. Thank you!

I find myself agreeing with both sides (if there are really sides here) in this thread. I have to wonder, what would be a better term than "Organized Play"?

From previous posts, Jeffrey has no part in the later episodes. Does the dream gate? Or is it just a subplot in ep 1?

I've successfully run Crack'd & Crook'd Manse from Mansions of Madness at cons. The Haunting does well too. If you can get your hands on it, any of the scenarios in Secrets are great as well. Any of those can be run in 4 hour slots.

I agree - CoC is not D&D, Pathfinder, or any other system. I just ask that the time frame be kept in mind when designing future organized play campaigns. Its more than possible to design a great scenario that runs ~ 4 hours. Regardless, its a great scenario and I look forward to running it! I am curious if others are feeling the same way. If I am the only one with this issue, then any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

I didn't want to hijack the other thread discussing how long it takes to run the first chapter of A Time to Harvest. This was stated in the thread by Mike Mason: I am excited to run this, but there is an issue that I will have with this (and I suspect others may too). I run my organized play games at a local gaming pub once a month and have a 4 hour time slot (that can run over some, but not by much). Players sign up each month, so there is no guarantee the same players will be in each game. Since the first episode could take 8-12 hours total (depending on group) that means it would take me 2-3 months to get through episode one. If each episode is like that, all 6 will take 12-18 months to complete. For a group that meets more often than once a month, this won't be an issue; for those of us that run games like this, it is. My goal now is to read through the episodes and trim out enough that it still makes sense, but can be run within my time slot. Hopefully, I can accomplish this. This is not a criticism of the quality of the scenario - the material I've read so far is excellent. However, its not what I would consider ripe for organized play. If Chaosium is trying to complete with the D&D Adventurers league which does the same thing, it should be realized that most of the Adventurers league campaigns are also broken up into episodes, but most of those episodes can be played in at least a 4 hour timeframe. This is done so it can specifically be run during one of these shorter time slots. (Yes there is a difference between a D&D dungeon crawl and an investigation, but it is possible to run a good CoC investigation in 2-4 hours) In any case, I am wondering if I am the only one with this issue. Is anyone else planning on running the game in a compressed timeframe like me and is having to chop material out? Or am I just in a unique situation that doesn't apply to anyone else?