CastingsofCthulhu

I figure this is a safe place for some feedback as most people here have access to the Necropolis PDF, rather than posting it on facebook or twitter. My office has a visitor for a few days next week and it turns out he's a gamer but has never played CoC, so I'm planning on running the Necropolis one evening for a bit of fun after hours. One thing I'm planning to do is have the map being placed piece by piece as they find each area, so I started to redraw the map as the one in the PDF has some spoilers that can easily be cut off without it being obvious that something is missing. I've tried to redraw the map so it looks hand drawn on old paper and the plan is, I print it without the room names, cut it up into chunks and place parts as they explore. I'm still working on this but only have a couple of days before the game. Does anyone think I've missed anything that should be on there? I've added some bits and changed some labels to remove as much of the text from the PDF map as possible. One caveat is I can't use colour to define things like the blocked doors as one guy in the office is colour blind, so I need to make sure I've got enough colour contrast to make it obvious what is what, hence everything is done in black. Any feedback is welcome. Thanks.

One or two shotguns on a yacht may be for clay shooting off the aft deck out at sea rather than for defense, but i'd suggest that they're kept locked in a secure gun cabinet that the skipper has the key for. He's probably going to frown upon taking them on the cargo ship without a good reason so they can be locked away up to the point the skipper is killed off and the key gets lost in the carnage or with the body. At that point they need to either give up on them or figure out how to get into it to get them.

i've ordered it as well. i just hope i don't get stung on customs coming into the UK.

i ended it on a suitable down note in that they may have closed the gate but the rest of the world is still falling apart. if i ran it again i'd probably have more happen sooner. i enjoyed running the story but would love to expand it over a couple of sessions. all of the ones in that book feel slightly rushed for one session but is probably just my play style, i like to let my groups run around a bit exploring and getting some background info. i've run the derelict three times now and each time i've been pushed a bit for time towards the end.

lol. i really wish one of them had read it before, but no, i don't think its possible as they didn't have a clue most of the time, i had to endure 10 minutes of one of them RPing buying lightbulbs. two of the player had never played an RPG before, the other two had only played CoC once before. the book had only been out a few weeks before as well so its pretty remote. I'll admit them finding the bones early was probably my fault as i mentioned the tree twice which got one of the players interested. it was him being a bit out of character saying that i had kept mentioning so was interested, but i was trying to help them visualise the scene and in horror film, they always foreshadow important elements. I can't remember specifics but they found the bones after they'd found the room and the clues for the ritual so put 2 and 2 together that it was the artist who was buried. then when the work crew found the painting in the cellar, they figured out it was one of his. one of the new players suggested putting the bones in the cellar for safe keeping, then when it all kicked off, they completed the ritual and threw the bones in as it was his painting that was causing the problem, or so they thought. in their mind, the artist was the root of the problem, not that he was just predicting it. they got the right answer but the wrong theory.

i ran this recently and has a couple of similar issues but with some careful guidance, i managed to keep them on track. its a big sandbox story so it was tricky to keep all of the background info handy in my head to respond to all of the players actions. I used the preacher a bit to add background to the area and i also created a foreman to act as a go between the party and the workers hired to fix the place up. it made it easier to have one character rather than randos. With regards to your question: 1) if they look like they getting ready to leave remember theres a volcano there, you could have it start to become active and block part of the valley. the other option is greed, the new owner wants to stay to fix the place up and its likely to be a safer place than the outside world by the time they realise theres some bad things happening. 2) use the workers to 'find' the gate. its only a crack at first but the painting win the cellar should be found and the gate can start to manifest by a small crack of light or noises coming from it. 3) believe it or not, this is how my players completed the game. they found the bones under the tree early on but it wasnt until quite late one of them thought about dumping them through the gate. i'll admit i can't see any logic behind why his bones specifically would close the gate. its a shame as i was looking forward to a TPK.

Thats understandable, it does depend on the security settings on the file. Export to Word required you to have an Acrobat or an Adobe CC licence but the normal save option under 'save as other' works for most PDFs but I doubt Chaosium want people ripping off their text.

It depends on the security settings of the PDF but it is possible to save as a txt file from acrobat reader. The formatting will be lost so you would have to fudge it about a bit, but you'd have the raw text.

Have a listen to How We Roll http://www.howwerollpodcast.com/ They've run some very good CoC games.

Theres a few short scenarios that can build up suspense without the need of a big bad monster in it. Mr Corbitt from the mansion of madness book is one of my go to games for new players who don't know much about the mythos as your not dealing with a monster directly. Also I recently ran 'Blackwater Creek' from the Keepers screen pack and 'The Dark Wood' from the Adventures in Arkham county back to back with the same group and they're slow build ups. Blackwater is a good one as its a slow build up with a few possible shock moments.