Nyorlandhotep

Thanks a lot for the answer. I agree with all the points you are making, that is very much how I ended up interpreting it in the game. However, this discussion (for me at least, but I do not think I am particularly bad at reading rules) suggests that the hunting rules as written should come with some additional explanation on what they mean in terms of the fiction. Another thing that came up during the gaming session was when hunting the lion: one of the knights, arriving first, charged the lion. As I understood the rules, this first attack is unopposed, right? According to the rules, too, in the next round all the knights in the hunting party get to attack oppose by the Evasiveness of the quarry, which means the lion is still getting damage while not trying to fight back. If this is correct, it does improve the chances of success of the knights considerably, but it strikes me as somewhat odd, as the lion is a particularly powerful beast that would do better by attacking than by trying to evade its pursuers...

I was running this scenario for the first time today and I was confused again by the hunting rules. During the Unarboring, the Hunters that follow a leader will have their first position defined by the Hunting skill check of the leader. However, this position will change *individually* through an individual movement rate check for each hunter. Fine to this point. But then, during the Pursuit, we are back at the leader doing the hunting rolls for the group and the members members dealing separately with the consequences. This sounds counter intuitive, as during the pursuit a follower can be 2 steps ahead of the leader (due to dealing better with the movement rate check), but still encountering the same obstacles that the leader encounters, while this leader is several steps behind. Am I reading this well?

Thanks for the quick answer! This should really be better explained in the scenario, especially given that it is a quickstart, ie, likely to be read by newer players.

I am trying to run this quickstart as my first ever attempt to play Pendragon. I am not sure I understand the hunting rules. As written, it seems that the only way to reach an actual confrontation with the Prey (the Abay), is by rolling a 12 on obstacles. Is that correct? That would make the hunt extremely long and a die-rolling fest, so I somehow suspect that if at the end of a contest one of the participant parties is at the same position as the prey, one should proceed to the Abay, but this is not explicitly said anywhere. Can somebody help me?

I would like to playtest some scenarios. I can easily give feedback within 2 weeks from receiving the description of the scenario.

Second run I made most of the changes I mentioned in my previous post: -no Rose, just Anna, the doctor who wants to help the girls, worked at a health center in Northport, does not live with the girls and does not have any link to the Spa; -Anna is afraid of both Brethren and Hybrids; -I prepared before the game a detailed list of dates for pregnancies; the young girls 2.5-3 months, all at the same time; the older women, dates spread from 7 to 3 months (pregnancy isn’t visible before 10 weeks); -I also added that the broaches are delivered by the Hybrids, not personally by doctor Grey (to further weaken the link to the spa). Overall, my feeling is that the dynamics improved with the changes. I think the players had a lot of fun, although that was in part due to their own antics. A small detail with major consequences for the second run was that I told the descendent (from the previous scenario) that he was starting to show some signs of his Innsmouth ascendancy, especially an accentuated Innsmouth look. He used this persistently with the Hybrids to try to convince them he was a visitor “from your Innsmouth cousins”. This resulted in often getting a confused, vulnerable reaction from the Hybrids (inc. doctor Grey) In this second run, the Brethren were still largely left alone by the investigators, although this time the investigators took their time to interrogate the young girls on the details of the Brethren rituals and faith - it would help if the scenario would define some of it: their farm, how many they are, a little map of their farm, and a list of rituals and beliefs. To make them an effective red herring you need to detail them a bit more. Experienced players recognize the lack of detail as indication of a red herring. Both times the scenario ended up with the characters driving from the spa, trying to evade the Hybrids after a confrontation with Dr. Grey. In the first run, Mindy the thief managed to get into the private quarters of Grey and ran away with the tablet. In the second run, the investigators tried to convince Grey to explain them his hydrotherapy machines. Grey convinced them to spend a night at the spa, offering a hut for then to stay. He then drugged two of them with drinks (the others didn’t drink anything out of suspicion). His intention was then to take out the other two with spells during the night, but they actually managed to kill him. They then run to the car. The first run ended with the players defeating the Hybrids in a shootout after the Hybrids rammed the investigators’ car out of the road trying to retrieve the stolen tablete. The second run ended when a chase was cut short when one of the two cars the Hybrids brought to the chase crashed after the driver failed a Drive roll, while the other hybrid car also crashed due to the driver’s death - caused by an extreme success on a triple-penalty revolver shot (I know - what are the odds) by one of the investigators. The second run had a better rhythm. Maybe because the investigators did weirder stuff - for instances, they outright walked to the kiosk, kidnapped and interrogated the hybrid - but also because I knew the scenario better and my little changes did solve some of the small inconsistencies I noticed in the first run. In any case, this second run was very successful, and I am sure that the players had a great time. Thanks, Chaosium people!

My post may make it sound like I want to give them a chance to “win” no matter what, but I think that my issue is that I tried to avoid a two-track scenario: some investigators running around trying to escape the caves while the others try to survive the bank with no link between the two groups Writing this, I realize it is pretty viable, but I did not consider keeping it like that to the end as an option, maybe because it is a bit more work to pace it correctly, maybe because practically everything about the caves needs to be improvised by the Keeper. But you are essentially right: there is no requirement for the investigators to always have good options, or for the story to proceed in a linear faction. Also, it is true that the players loved the scenario as is.

I am running this scenario twice, this is a report on my first run. I must say that the players liked this scenario a bit less than the previous ones. Maybe it was my incompetence at running it, but, overall, the criticism I collected was: -perceived plot and motivation inconsistencies (more on that later); -somewhat predictable solution from the beginning (doctor in the spa), with a lot of somewhat inconsequential legwork in between. I noticed this could be a problem when reading the scenario, and thus I didn’t distribute the handout with the list of names, which prominently refers to the Mud Lake Spa, but even then it came up too easily too fast (due to Anna’s link, and the fact that all the older women must mention it if asked about ever visiting Northport). -I scheduled the scenario as a one-off, as intended, but the amount of available legwork (interviewing all the women), investigating the Brethren, etc, makes it difficult to fit it in a 4:30 hours session- now, I did a lot of editing on the “interviewing the women” part, allowing only for a collective interview with the girls, and an extensive interview with the oldest of the pregnant woman, while summarizing the rest of the (varied) results in trying to contact the others. Now, going into deeper detail, I will point out some of the specific issues I encountered and how I propose to solve them. First, I think there are issues with determining whether the women are truly pregnant, and establishing the date of impregnation. There are no reliable pregnancy tests in the 1920s, and lack of menstruation is not proof of pregnancy, especially in older women. So they would all have to be in a late state of pregnancy to be fairly certain. It is suggested in the text that some of the women could be late in the pregnancy, but there are no dates. On top of that, in my run, the investigators found it important to try to establish a chronology and this was hampered by a lack of ready information to guide the Keeper; this was pretty tough for me as I am not an obstetrician. The written scenario cannot be exhaustive, but some guidance here would help, especially a timeline with the impregnation date for each woman. Since Anna worked at the spa, It is very likely she would have recognized the names of the women in the list as clients of the spa, and that she would have made the association for the investigators. Rose is assumed by the factions to be a focal point for information about pregnant women. Maybe I don’t understand American bureaucracy of the 1920s very well, but why would the hall of records have information about these pregnancies for Rose to obtain? This would make more sense if the babies were already born, as their birth would probably be recorded. Maybe this is an artifact of a previous draft of the scenario? And some other issues derived from this one: -Why would the Hybrids expect to figure out where the pregnant girls are by following somebody who works at the city hall? Even more importantly, if they have already been at the boarding house, they know where the girls are, or at least where Anna is, so why are they still following Rose when the scenario starts? -Same for the Brethren: how did they get to Rose? The only connection is through Anna, but if they know about Anna, why do they follow Rose and not Anna, whom is much closer to the girls? Also, Rose’s motivations are problematic. She steals confidential records to sell them along with the identities of some desperate runaway girls to a sensationalist magazine. Moreover, she only came across this stuff because a friend of hers was trying to help those desperate girls. Sounds like a terrible person. But, on the other hand, her description in the scenario as written tends towards depicting her in a positive manner. My proposal on how to solve most of the problems mentioned above is to remove Rose from the story. There is only Anna, and she is a medical doctor. She met the girls at the hospital in Northport where she worked, and decided to help them. She moved the girls to the boarding house in Traverse city in secret, and moved to Traverse city herself to be close to them (but she does not live with them, to avoid being followed by the Brethren to their hiding place). From the records/stories at the hospital where she now works, she started to realize there were all these other virgin births in Traverse city. And then she started being followed by the Brethren and by the Hybrids, who noticed that she suspiciously left Northport at the same time as the girls. She contacted ”Strange but True” because she thinks nobody else will believe her, she is being followed, and she needs help. Maybe she knew Cleaver before and knows that he is a good guy. On top of all this, she needs money to help resettle the girls. Moreover, she never worked at the Spa, and the health center in Northport has no link to the spa. This is necessary to make the spa connection to the events somewhat weaker. In my first run of the scenario, the players complained it was too obvious from the beginning that this would end up at the spa. Editing out Rose also cuts some time in running the scenario, condensing two scenes into one and reducing the number of NPCs, without losing any of its challenge/mystery. -Probably it should be established that all the wealthy women are at a rather late stage of their pregnancies... otherwise, at the age of most of them, the pregnancy would be assumed to be something else. And/Or (some) of the babies could be already born... that would solve several problems. Other stuff: -Why were the girls so afraid to stay with the Brethren? To run away like they did and hide is only explainable if they were in grave danger. The scenario does not make it feel as such, as the pastor when confronted with one of the pregnancies only makes some judgmental remarks, and the two stalkers are real pushovers. Maybe you don’t want to portrait or even hint at violence from a religious group against women, but it is somehow inescapable if you want to make the scenario work. You need to at least make the threat of violence very real. Also, this lack of threat on the brethren side makes them a very unconvincing red herring. The way Rose dismisses her stalkers as written in the scenario made the investigators quickly lose any interest in them. The Brethren need to be a lot creepier. -The agenda of the Hybrids is unclear: they already found the girls by the time the scenario starts, so what are they up to now? -I find the offer from Dr Grey of a gold brooch to each of the impregnated women a bit too conspicuous... and expensive.

In the first run, August dir try to bargain (and this after being shot in the face), but the result was the descendent immediately breaking the needle in two. And when you decide not to bargain then a Deus Ex-machina new option is suddenly created by the arrival of Chastity. In the second run, because the descendent went down to the vaults alone, the other characters had nothing to bargain with, and, indeed, no emergency exit (of course, I can make up one myself, but it is not in the scenario). You could argue that they got themselves into that mess, though, so in all, maybe this is not a big issue. I think the problems regarding the usage of the caves are a bit more difficult to solve. You want the captured investigators to be “in the game”, which means that they should have the opportunity to both run away and get to the bank, in some plausible manner.

By the way, I forgot to mention that I felt there were minor inconsistencies and potencial issues in this scenario. A minor one is that it is quite unlikely that August (and even Wilma) would have the time to organize the ambush if the descendent does not stay at the house after the discussion with Grace to talk with either the Alchemist or Edward. Of course, the Keeper can always decide that there was no ambush if the characters move fast enough. This was pointed out to me by the players in the second run. A more problematic one is that dumping in the cave investigators captured during the ambush is either implausible or unusable as a device. I will try to explain what I mean. The great thing about the caves scene is is that it allows players that were unlucky during the ambush to stay in play, following through the tunnels and finding the rest of the team. For this to happen, they must be free and unguarded (or incompetently imprisoned and/or incompetently unguarded). If not, the characters are just hostages to be used during a final attempt by Chastity and August to get the safe deposit box, but then the purpose of keeping the investigators in play fails, because they become passive props. I opted for leaving them next to unguarded, such that they could follow Chastity and participate in the grand finale. None of the players contested that, but I still find it kind of inconsistent. Another issue is that, in the bank, the characters are likely to be overwhelmed by August’s goons, and the bank has no other way to ran away than through the basement, if it is opened by Chastity. Allowing for a way out of the bank that the investigators could find for themselves would be nice. It would give them agency, instead of the appearance of Chastity being an ex-machina way out disguised as a threat.

I think it is long enough if you allow the investigators to arrive the evening before the reading of the will to get a taste of good old Innsmouth. There are two problems with that. First, you need to be able to describe Innsmouth, but I guess that is a question of re-reading The Shadow over Innsmouth for inspiration and making stuff up a bit when you don’t know (I do not believe there needs to be a “canonical” Innsmouth, and although Escape from Innsmouth is great, re-reading it all is too much effort to stage a 4h scenario). The other - and bigger - problem is that there is some potencial for the scenario to be completely derailed - as it almost happened in my first run of it (which I posted), because Innsmouth is filled with dangers for nosy investigators but that still means you can improvise a lot of interesting stuff.

First, I apologise for my bad English. I am not a native speaker, as it should be pretty obvious I guess. I ran the scenario twice, both times with 4 players. For the first run, I had a mix of experienced Call of Cthulhu players and newbies,. For the second run, I had a group of experienced role-players, but with relatively scarce experience of Call of Cthulhu. *First run* The investigators arrived to Innsmouth the evening before the reading of the will. They drove through the empty dark streets with decaying facades and boarded windows, heard the screams and wails coming out of derelict houses and arrived to the Gilman hotel, where they got a rather unfriendly reception. They set about finding a place to dine, ending up in a gloomy tavern nearby, where the other patrons eyed them suspiciously. I decided that the bartender would be somewhat less unfriendly than the others, and they immediately jumped on the chance to ask some questions. Since they were concerned with the longevity of the Innsmouth folk, they came up with the idea of visiting graveyards to check on birth and death dates. Thus they asked the bartender about graveyards. He told him that most of Innsmouth dead were not buried but dropped into the sea, according to a local religious costume. This lead to questions about religion to which the bartender told them that the local church was The Esoteric Order at Dagon, and warned them not to ask too many questions about it. “Folk around here are touchy about religious matters, you know?” They also asked the bartender about the bulgy eyes, and got the answer that most people in Innsmouth suffered from a hereditary condition that made them light sensitive, and that is why most commerce is open in the evening and not during the day. The investigators visited a couple of stores before going back to the hotel, seeing many shambling figures with bulgy eyes on the streets. In the shops, they were treated with suspicion. They went to bed conveniently freaked out by the place. They woke up early in the morning with the idea of investigating the Civil Records and the Temple of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. They found mostly empty streets and closed shops. The City Hall was closed and so was the Temple. As they tried to break into the temple, they were found by a group of thugs (hybrids) that walked in their direction shouting threats. One of the investigators lost his temper (Archie) and shot one of the toughs in the leg. At this point I thought that the whole story would be derailed, but they managed to run away, got to the car and drove away from Innsmouth. They had the good sense to stay away from Innsmouth until close to the hour of the reading of the will. They arrived to the reading 20 minutes before it started, and Professor Challenger (the designated descendent) got himself in a chat with Edward, who played as well as he could his suave man of the world demeanor. After the reading, things proceeded with one of the investigators being interrogated (and freaked out) by Wilma, while professor Challenger talked with Charlie Grace. Upon leaving the house, they quickly refused the offers of either the alchemist or Edward, and drove to the bank, choosing the way through the docks. When the ambush happened, a shot from August’s shotgun, and a couple of failed Drive rolls led to the car spinning out of control and eventually stopping next to the ditch from where August’s goons jumped to attack the car. One of the investigators shot August in the face, making him fall unconscious. Another investigator jumped out of the car, dodging the goons, and ran to grab August’s shotgun. But as he was running, Chastity emerged from de sea. He panicked and was captured by her while trying to run away. Another one was beaten unconscious by the goons while trying to get out of the car (by the wrong side). In the meanwhile, the remaining two investigators saw the goons advance with clubs to break all windows. One of the remaining two investigators lit some dynamite (yes, they insisted on bringing dynamite with them), and both jumped out of the car. The explosion took care of the goons, and the two investigators ran into the dark alleys of Innsmouth. They had decided to simply steal a car and leave, but at this point the alchemist caught up with them, driving a car, and insisted that they get the deposit box from the bank before leaving. The investigators accepted this, as Professor Challenger was extremely interested in seeing what was in that box. They arrived to the bank and descended to the vault with the alchemist tagging along. In the meanwhile, the two captured investigators recovered their consciousness in the caves. They managed to stealth their way and follow Chastity. At the bank, in the vault, Professor Challenger found the needle. The Alchemist explained him how the needle worked (well, omitting some important details). At this point, a disfigured August entered the bank surrounded by goons, promising to kill everybody if not given the deposit box. In response to this, the Professor simply broke the needle, immediately causing the alchemist to die in a whirlwind of flames. At that point, one of the walls of the basement collapsed, revealing Chastity, followed by the other two investigators. Together, the investigators dodged Chastity and ran into the labyrinthine caves, finding their way to an exit (a ladder to a manhole). At this point, a couple of Deep Ones found them. Archie went into indefinite insanity at the sight of the deep ones, and attacked them, being quickly killed, but providing time for the other investigators to go up the ladder, back to the streets of Innsmouth, where they finally stole a car and ran away, promising never to come back. Professor Challenger (who has been studying Otis since the previous scenario) is now studying himself and Otis to try to figure out a cure for their condition. *Second run* Main differences with respect to the first run: -upon arrival to Innsmouth, the investigators went to take a look at the house, but didn’t break in; they visited the same tavern for dinner; -in the morning, the investigators did try to investigate the Temple of the Hermetic Order of Dagon, but simply backed away when threatened by toughs. -at the reading of the will, Melissa (the descendent) asked Grace to go to the library, instead of the Conservatory, for their private talk. This led to quite the mess, because another investigator, Mindy, was at that time searching the library for photos and valuables; August, overhearing the interchange between Melissa and Grace, run to the library to quickly hide to listen to their conversation; Mindy hid when hearing August running to the library, and a hidden Mindy thus saw August hiding behind a couch to eavesdrop on Melisse and Grace; Melissa and Grace entered the library, and before they could talk, Mindy jumped from her hiding place to attack August with a blackjack. August dodged the attack and ran away. The conversation between Melissa and Grace took place and she got the key. -upon leaving the house, the alchemist proposed to join them and they accepted; he drove with them to the Bank -on the way to the bank, a couple of good Drive rolls got them through the ambush; -and then everything went haywire. Melissa decided to go alone to the vault. Thus, when August arrived, the others couldn’t join her, as the vault doors were closed behind her. Two were immediately overwhelmed by August’s toughs. Mindy holed up in the office of the bank manager with a gun pointed at the door. Meanwhile, Melissa let the alchemist install the needle in her hand. When he was done, he disappeared. Seconds later, Chastity appeared, Melissa lost her senses, and was taken into the caves by Chastity, never to be seen again. As for the other investigators: August was about to kill them, but they were spared by Edward’s intervention, as he thought that killing them would attract more attention than letting them leave, after making very clear to them that if they ever told about what transpired they would get a nasty visitation. *Summary* Overall, the scenario was quite fun. Not exactly purist... But I think all of the players really liked it. -Allowing the investigators to explore Innsmouth a bit before the reading of the will allowed for ta strong contrast between a first moody, ominous half, and a second half of almost pulp-fiction-esque action. -The amount of preparation that the characters did before travelling to Innsmouth dictated strongly their capacity to deal with August’s goons and with Chastity. Furthermore, in the second run, the decision of Melissa to go into the vault alone strongly conditioned the options for the other three investigators at the end.

Spoiler warning: this post describes my experience with running Star Brothers, so it includes spoilers for that scenario. I ran the Star Brothers scenario for two different groups of players, both a mix of very experienced players and relative newbies. I changed the scenario a bit: the men in black (MiB) are occultists/monster hunters/investigators of very low sanity who are waging their own violent war against the deep ones (they will kill deep ones and hybrids on sight, as well as any one else who gets in their way). I made this change to create more options for the players at the end of the scenario. In this variant, the MiB will follow Elsie and/or the players hoping they will lead them to Otis, who they intend to capture or kill. The final standoff will have up to 4 factions involved: investigators, MiB, deep ones, and bootleggers. Main notes: -In both sessions, the players adopted Elsie as an extra NPC party member; I tried to avoid overuse of Elsie by having her say that she promised to her father not to get into trouble after the appearance of the Men in Black in town intimidating people, but, given her personality, it was easy for the characters to persuade her to join them. -the best NPCs by far are Hannah and Otis, very sympathetic in their cookiness. For the scenario to work, it is imperative that they have their moment, so the Keeper should make it easy for the investigators to find and talk with them. I gave Otis a very marked “dreamer” personality, complete with long speeches about inter-planetary friendship. His loneliness also came through. The players loved him, and really felt they had to protect him. -Both times, the investigators searched for Frye in the city record and in the local basic school archive, assuming that Otis has to be from around Ipswich; I improvised that Otis attended school up to the age of twelve, and that most people no longer remember him or his mum. -still, players find it somewhat strange that nobody in town knows who Otis is. -common question asked by the investigators in shops was whether Otis’ accent was local. -good pre-gen characters. In both sessions, Minny was the standout character. -one of the groups went to the town hall records searching for abandoned houses in the saltmarsh assuming that was where Otis was. I gave them two addresses: the location of the bootleggers and that of Otis; this worked well, leading to a minor confrontation with the bootleggers; -one difficulty I found in the scenario was how to create a sense of urgency in finding Otis; to fix this, in the second game, I let one of the store owners mention to the investigators that he overheard the Men-in-Black talking about “taking care of Frye asap”, and I had the investigators eavesdrop on Hannah, when she receives a visit by a “company man”, ie a hybrid, who tells her that “your son has not been behaving, and we will have to deal with it very soon”.. All in all, everybody had fun with the scenario, but it is sometimes difficult to justify the actions of the MIBs and of the Deep Ones; for instances, why do they take so much time to find Otis? in my game, I assumed the MiB were too psychologically unstable to effectively carry out a methodical investigation in town (and thus preferred shadowing the investigators and Elsie); and that the Deep Ones (inc. hybrids) wetr afraid of making things worse by being too conspicuous, and so they only searched through the salt marsh (ie, not in town), and only at night (which slowed down their efforts).

Name: Orlando Country: Netherlands Location: Eindhoven I am Portuguese, but I have lived in the Netherlands for many years. I run a weekly CoC campaign on Skype and an almost bi-weekly Pulp Cthulhu campaign live. I also organize CoC one-shots at my place to introduce friends and acquaintances to rpg. I have played rpgs since the early 90s, and I started with CoC 4th edition when I was 18, more than 25 years ago.

I am going to run this Friday and Saturday to mixed groups of experienced and new players. I am considering replacing the Hybrids by some sort of monster hunter - a nasty, amoral individual that wants to capture Otys - perhaps to experiment on him, perhaps to summarily exterminate him - I still need to work out the details, could be a sorcerer, a priest/inquisitor type, a mad scientist, or a government agent, but the point is that he does not have the best interests of Otys in mind - he will hunt Otys and kill/torture him. Having two factions (deep ones and hunter) chasing Otys should create more mystery and dramatic tension, and eventually add a difficult moral choice for the characters to make. What do you think?