Nevarre

Great! Thanks both for the replies.

Hey! So I completed episode 1 a couple of days ago. It all went really well until the PCs ran away of the beast in the woods (I think I spooked them all out TOO well!) and then ALL joined the survey on day 4. None of them ran when attacked and all were captured and 'replaced' (in spite of my various hints!) . This was great for a Call of Cthulhu one-shot ending - especially when I closed the book - indicating that the game was 'done' (they obviously thought they were all dead) and I then said 'Two days later, all the students return to Arkham...' and the players all just stared at me! My question is... how best to pick up on Ep2? I've only skimmed it so far, but the players have said that they want to find out what happens next, and I didn't spot any '...if no one escapes' tips. Anyone else had a similar situation and had to introduce new PCs into the story in Ep2 ? Thoughts?

I recently ran episode 1 over the course of two evenings with 4 players - each session came out at about 3 hours 45 minutes. This included giving out the pre-gens and asking the players to work on relationships, backgrounds and connections - that probably took an hour. We weren't in any rush and invested time understanding the NPCs etc.