Joe Kenobi

Thanks, @Voko. Now incorporated!

@sgtscott658, can you say more about the quality and breath of the driving chase tables in Highway of Blood? My group plays almost exclusively 1920s adventures, so I'm unlikely to run the scenario, but I'd be willing to shell out the $11.95 for the PDF for the inspiration tables alone if they're decently comprehensive--feature a large number of hazards & barriers, preferably with offerings intended for city driving and separate ones for more rural car chases. I bought Bayt Al Azif #1 primarily for the foot chase inspiration tables and have no regrets. But $11.95 is a little more than I'd want to spend to "risk it" without some good intel that they're likely to prove a broadly useful tool with high reusability in multiple car chase settings.

Thanks, all! Additions & revisions made.

Bridgett was a great addition in the most recent episode of the Miskatonic University Podcast—great to hear she’s taking on even more in the community and expanding her voice!

I will also point out--not to undermine your point, but as a counterpoint to soften it--there is a documented perception of increased crime counter to underlying crime statistics that is often driven by improved communication, technology, and media coverage. I have not done my homework on changes between the 1870s and 1920s, but I have seen studies showing this change in perception with the dawn of the television, then the dawn of the internet and social media. It wouldn't surprise me to learn some (not all) of the increased perception of violence in society was actually driven by improved news communication, not just changes in the true underlying statistics.

I love the idea of a player-facing, “in universe” guide to the Miskatonic Valley! It would be so much fun to provide something like that for my players.

My coauthor and I submitted Prisoners' Dilemma. Honestly, would be thrilled to see ENnie recognition of any of the great titles in the Miskatonic Repository!

Thanks, @AlonsoAguilurk! That's a helpful list. I've run Edge of Darkness and Dead Light, and played in Missed Dues; you're right, those definitely fit the bill. And I have copies of Crimson Letters and Whispers of Harlem by virtue of owning their respective books, but admit I've never read through those scenarios specifically. Will definitely give them a closer look! The others I'll have to look into--though while I've heard great things about Crack'd and Crooked Manse, I've also heard to expect it to result in a TPK (not sure the veracity of that intel?).

I like the penalty die solution: it's not that your player can't--especially if the player insists they want to give it a try--it's just that the attacker is so close he can't wield the rifle as effectively as he would under other circumstances.

This is all sensible advice, especially the bit about inserting real-world consequences when players become too murderous or prone to gunplay. But I'll second @MandilarasM's concern: Despite the notion that in Call of Cthulhu, violence isn't a good answer, a great many of the most popular scenarios condition and encourage players to see it as a solution (in many scenarios, it is the solution). So I can advertise the game to my players at the start as, "Using violence will only get you into trouble," but then playing through -- to name just a few common early scenario examples -- immediately demonstrates otherwise and often punishes them if they didn't load up on combat skills. I'm currently running for a group; good luck making it through that one without an ability to hold your own in a fight (or, indeed, without turning to violence as your solution at least once in nearly every scenario). I've also found it's often difficult for players to detect when they are "supposed to" stand and fight, versus when they are "supposed to" surrender, versus when they are "supposed to" flee. Many modules feature a similar buildup where the scenario then "expects" one of these outcomes--are two PCs supposed to try to hold their own against four Deep Ones, or is surrender/accepting capture a better option? Many modules assume one outcome, without direction as to what happens if the PCs surrender in the former scenario or fight to the death in the latter (well, it's clear what happens there, but not very satisfying and generally not clear how the PCs should know the NPCs aren't going to fight them to the death in this case). Certainly I've found ways to get around this as a Keeper, but it often amounts to railroading a capture. That's a long buildup to this question: What are good scenarios to run that involve no assumed violence on the part of the investigators, that have at least a moderate degree of survivability, and that are set in the 1920s? (I know there are Modern scenarios that do this well, but I prefer to run Call of Cthulhu in its classic era.) Running these kind of modules early would seem to do a lot of the legwork toward training players away from becoming Murder Hobos.

Eh, I'm a little more skeptical that it's a reflection of a discerning analysis on the part of buyers. My guess is it has more to do with "Ooh, pirates!" That's a flashy, eye-catching theme (vs. the other Kickstarter project that didn't have nearly as clear a unifying theme). Regardless of publisher, the Call of Cthulhu Kickstarter projects defined by a clear time period & locale seem to be among the most successful. But I'm admittedly someone who backed the other project and will probably sit this one out--because I prefer my Call of Cthulhu in the 1920s, and because while I wish more Kickstarter publishers were clear-eyed and up front about their actual production timelines, I've come to accept that a project delivered to completion within 12 months of the advertised finish line is more-or-less on time. I'm probably part of the problem for accepting that.

Bumping up this thread to share the news that Rolling Boxcars has published a review of our scenario! We've also picked up a couple of nice reviews over on DTRPG itself.

Looks cool—putting it on my Wishlist!

Just wrapped up this one with my group. It took a marathon 9 sessions for us--we keep our sessions to 2.5-3 hours, and my group is always on the longer side with scenarios, but nine sessions is even long for us. Given we play every other week with a few cancellations in there, that means we've been playing this one since late November! Unfortunately, I lost my hybrid investigator to a "Blackwater Creek" interlude and debilitating madness. But, because he'd decided not to take the needle, we narrated an epilogue where he continued his life in Arkham, but kept waking up in the middle of the night on the streets of Innsmouth. Until one night he woke up there, felt the call of the sea, and just... went for a swim. Adjustments: I made a few changes to the scenario based on feedback in these forums. I made Rose Perry a nurse in Traverse City who went to nursing school with Anna Samuels. Anna worked at a clinic in Northport (no connection to Mud Lake Sanitarium) and brought the girls to Traverse City to help them, and is staying with her old classmate Rose while she helps the girls and picks up sub nursing shifts at the clinic. She took the girls to St. Ursula's, but she and Anna have been followed around since then (she's been in town maybe a week), so she's been nervous to go back to St. Ursula's. None of the Northport girls have been able to receive medical care due to Anna's fears, so the Coterie is still trying to figure out where they are. I made Rose something of an unscrupulous friend who sold this story to Elijah Cleaver. Evelyn Hide and Marjorie Donald are patients Rose has seen, and she was considering selling the story of their geriatric pregnancies to Strange but True! all by itself. Once her friend Anna showed up with a bunch of "virgin pregnancies," Rose went through the clinic's records to assemble a full list of strange pregnancies and then almost immediately called Elijah (which is why it's been only a week or so that they've been in town by the time the investigators arrive). Play Experience: When the investigators met with Rose, it came out that Anna didn't know she'd sold the story. She told them Anna was staying with her and they could interview her nonetheless, just not to let them know Rose had turned them onto the story. During the conversation, they noticed the not-so-subtle rubber-necking of James Carver and Nathaniel Gilbraithe. Rose laughed them off, but when the investigators read her initial nervousness and asked her about it, she disclosed that some other people had been following her and Anna around, too. When they got up to leave, they saw James and Nathaniel flee, and quickly split up, with two investigators racing off in pursuit, and two going to meet with Anna. The two who met with Anna learned some basic information, while the two who followed James and Nathaniel enjoyed a Car Chase before eavesdropping on them at the Bayside Auto Camp. They pieced together that the Lake Brethren were a local religious community, and at this point considered them a strong lead. The two who spoke with Anna went on to interview Evelyn Hide, who gave some basic information about Mud Lake Spa and flirted with the male investigator. All four regrouped at the hotel (non-alcoholic) bar and caught up. The group was spinning its wheels some chatting, so I put Victoria Maybury on the end of the bar, nonchalantly listening in. When they confronted her, she flirted with them some, trying to figure out what story they were working on. They got a suspicious vibe from her and suspected she was after the pregnant girls from Northport, so when she left the bar, one of them followed her. She immediately went and checked in with Evan Evers. As the day is turning to evening, the group decided to speak with Rose Perry again. Two went into the Traverse City Clinic while two staked out Evan Evers outside. At the clinic, they learned Rose was helping to deliver a baby for Elizabeth Madison. One snuck around and was able to speak with Rose, then got a good look at the baby, which of course had Deep One features (I even gave him flippers for feet). Then Evan caused a distraction outside while Victoria Maybury slipped inside, and the investigator inside eavesdropped to hear her explain she represented the Friends of the Orphans, which adopted children like Ms. Madison's with debilitating physical deformities. Ms. Madison agreed to give up the child for adoption, and Victoria left with him in tow. One investigator pursued Victoria while another two followed Rose Perry home--and saw another figure follow, before noticing them and breaking off--and the fourth remained in the clinic speaking to Ms. Madison. The one who followed Victoria saw her joined by Evan as the two proceeded with the baby down to the lakeshore, where a waiting fishing boat took them out and away under cover of darkness. The next day, the group drove up to Northport and plowed through most of their remaining rumors via a visit to the Leelanau Diner, then extended conversation with Leonard De Vries, and then library research via a key procured by De Vries (for a price, of course). They'd begun to suspect the Lake Brethren were a red herring, and were surprised they couldn't find a connection between them and the Mud Lake Spa (my timeline did suggest both came to Northport around the same general timeframe--perhaps the Spa is intended to be newer than that?). They got a big kick out of interacting with De Vries, who was exceedingly transparent about his desire for money in exchange for information, and then exceedingly willing to supply what he could when that money was offered. When the group bedded up for the night at a couple of bed & breakfasts in town, I decided one of them was run by Victoria Maybury as a way to reintroduce the coterie. The group left and had dinner at the Leelanau Diner, then two of them sneaked off to explore the Lake Brethren's farmstead. Mostly they overheard after-dinner prayers and Bible reading, then saw the young men and women file into separate barns/barracks for light's out. After a bit more snooping of the grounds to find only farm-related equipment, they decided more firmly that the Lake Brethren were likely a red herring. Upon returning to their lodging, the two at Victoria's place called up to her but received no response. They went upstairs and found she wasn't home, and so searched her bedroom and bathroom. The bedroom was fairly typical, though I had them come across (1) a couple of Deep One-style necklaces, (2) an earring carefully placed on a blouse in her dresser to detect if her things had been gone through, and (3) a medicine cabinet in the bathroom full of some fairly potent makeup. One investigator awoke up early the next day and attended the Lake Brethren's 7 a.m. Saturday morning service. He found it mostly run-of-the-mill fire and brimstone, but did take note of Pastor Graves's reference to re-baptisms in Deepshine Cover. Chatting after, Pastor Graves told him they'd be holding a re-baptism ceremony the next day after Sunday service and that he would be welcome to join. Then the group made their way up to Mud Lake Spa and scoped things out. At the Hydrotherapy building, while Dr. Grey was in with a patient, one investigator slipped into his residence (Luck roll found it unlatched) and another into his research laboratory, while the other two stood guard. The one in his apartment found the makeup but failed the POW roll and missed the painting, leaving him inexplicably nauseous. The other found his journals and ceramic jar, but on a pushed roll she broke the jar and spilled the residue all over her hands. It turned into rash but she was relieved to learn on a Hard CON roll, the rash dissipated. (Heh heh heh.) She made off with one of the journals and read it while two of the others went to the mechanotherapy building and found a workroom of Dr. Yetta's with half-assembled mechanical devices and some blueprints. Around noon, one investigator had a consultation with Dr. Grey. Things were fairly straightforward until the end, when she asked about fertility issues--he said he had an experimental fertility treatment he could try, but he would need some supplies that he wouldn't be able to procure until early the following week. While this happened, another investigator re-entered Dr. Grey's lab and stole the remaining journals. A different investigator went to Dr. Yetta and also said she had fertility issues; Dr. Yetta gave her a chiropractic examination and worked on some misaligned joints, but said she didn't see anything she could correct that would help with fertility. The group poured over the journals and learned that Dr. Grey felt the secrets he had learned from his new friends, coupled with what he had learned of the latest scientific advancements, could prove useful. There was then an opaque scientific discussion about the difference between saltwater and freshwater, followed by notes that tracked scientific progress without documenting what was being done--noting improved success over time culminating in "not perfect, but very usable." The final journal included a list of about a dozen women, including all the high society women of Traverse City the group was aware of, plus some that weren't local and some names entered quite a bit longer ago. There were no references to the Lake Brethren young women. One of the investigators then sought an appointment with Dr. Shelby for fertility issues. He prescribed a bottled drink of some kind that he said would do the trick with a 70% success rate, but if it didn't solve the problem, she should come back to the Spa in 3 months and they could try a different treatment. They stole one orb and dissected it on the floor of the gazebo, then swam out to grab another. On the investigator's swim back, he was attacked by two fully submerged Deep Ones, ultimately reducing him to 3 HP before he could escape. After patching up their damaged investigator, the group staked out Dr. Grey to see how he'd behave for the evening. Not long after wrapping up his appointments for the day, he stormed out of the hydrotherapy building to the main hall and found an office with a phone. Two investigators eavesdropped to hear him complaining about his broken ceramic jar, and agree to meet someone at 11 p.m. Dr. Grey then proceeded to the kitchen, where he procured a glass pitcher before heading back to his residence. The stakeout continued until 11, when Dr. Grey left his residence with the glass pitcher in tow and met up with Floyd Parker. The two proceeded to a car with Evan Evers behind the wheel, who took them down to the Deepshine Cove. My investigators split up, two following and two breaking into the residence. This time, one succeeded at her POW role and and located the painting. She failed her SAN checks while the other investigator gazed at it; with Grey out doing the ritual with the tablet, I had the webbed claw extend open-faced as if asking for something. After the SAN damage was done, the two slashed the painting with a knife, tore it off the wall, and upon a successful Luck roll that put a fireplace in Dr. Grey's living room, started a fire and chucked the painting in. I had it spark a bit when it first ignited. Meanwhile at the lake, the other two investigators watched Dr. Grey swim out and conduct the ritual while Floyd and Evan stood on the shore, keeping watch. The ritual built to its conclusion, and as Grey scooped up the seedpods, a few spilled into the lake. My investigators decided they'd had enough and attempted to jump Floyd and Evan. They were able to kill both Floyd, Evan, and a Deep One who emerged, while Dr. Grey fled in their car back to the Spa. He found his apartment broken into (though the investigators hid), then stalked off and captured Virginia Freeman, who was at the Spa. Dr. Grey stole the spa shuttle, but was forced off the road in a Car chase before the Investigators apprehended him. They took him back to the Spa, Virginia called the police, and then they interrogated him and got most of the story before the police arrived.

I am the co-author of a new scenario released via the Miskatonic Repository today: Prisoners' Dilemma. Inspired by the true life Dyatlov Pass Incident, "Prisoners' Dilemma" winds back the clock a bit and takes place in 1920s Russia. The investigators, all prisoners of the Russian State, have been press-ganged into service in the barren, frozen wilderness of central Russia. With a survival horror tone and heavy doses of cosmicism, "Prisoners' Dilemma" is a slow burn scenario intended for an experienced Keeper and 3 to 6 players. This 55-page module offers a linear plot tinged with heavy degrees of distrust and suspicion, including elements that might lead players to distrust one another. It comes ready to play with 6 pre-generated investigators. You can view a two minute trailer here, and for a limited time, we're offering $2 off the listed price when purchasing via this discount link. We hope you play it, and can't wait to hear your thoughts!

I assume "Uncategorized" are the games where Roll20 doesn't know what's being played, while "Other Games" are the ones where Roll20 has the data, but individually they add up to very small slices and so are best lumped together.

@TheEnclave, I don't want to pick a fight here--you're making a valid point and overall, I even mostly agree with you. Characters can have a lot more longevity than the discourse sometimes suggests. But I also think, moving from almost any other RPG to Call of Cthulhu, players are going to find their characters to be a lot more fragile. It clearly depends on your reference point; you're responding to a certain strain of thought sometimes found amongst Cthulhu Keepers, while I wrote that sentence for people new to Call of Cthulhu but likely with a background in other RPGs. Maybe for some people, a warning up front that "ultimately, your character's probably not going to ride off into the sunset" will dissuade them from playing because then they can't get invested in their investigator. In my experience, it's useful information in that it informs how a player approaches the game and orients them up front not to rush in where fools fear to tread, which actually helps keep their character alive. And as for the thoughts on Keeper psychology, well, anything in any roleplaying game becomes a problem when it it's approached as taking precedence over roleplay, story, and fun. People would do well to read an implied "your mileage may vary" at the end of any description of any RPG and how it's "supposed" to run. Long story short, "Characters will usually die or go insane" is certainly an oversimplification, but I don't think for a broad-brush characterization it's unfair.

Let's be clear: I don't say "Characters will usually die or go insane every single time you play." But if you have a long-running Call of Cthulhu campaign, do most PCs make it to a friendly retirement? How many starting PCs make it to the end of Masks of Nyarlathotep? Even after 6 months of regular play through scenarios, how likely are you to have all your starting PCs in place? That's a pretty notable differentiator from most RPGs.

These are good suggestions. I agree with the approach suggested above--lean toward simpler at every turn, and map onto Extreme/Hard/Regular/Fumble to the degree possible.

I haven't listened to the BBC Radio Lovecraft Investigations, so can't say if it's a perfect analog, but perhaps the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's Dark Adventure Radio Theatre would scratch the same itch? They do have a cost attached (not free like a podcast), but I've found them to be high quality and a lot of fun.

Bumping this thread to add a new option I see in the Miskatonic Repository: Red Skies.

@Mauro, you might have some luck with this thread. The general approach (from that thread and elsewhere) seems to be to roleplay the first attempt to hunt down a Deep One, and after that assume the necessary number of killings have occurred offscreen, but have the investigator roll for the appropriate sanity damage. I do like @Sasori's suggestion to figure out how soon until the Needle must be fed at the start of every scenario.

***SCENARIO SPOILERS FOLLOW*** Last night, we ran Gatsby & the Great Race virtually for 17 players! We ended up with 5 Keepers (three running reality rooms, a primary EK, and an assistant EK). I'm pleased to report it went very well--I would say 90th percentile outcome within the range of what I expected/feared--and virtual presented very few hangups! Technology platform: Zoom Zoom turns out to be just about perfect for G&tGR, given its breakout room functionality. I'm by no means a Zoom expert, so if you have information that contradicts the following, go with it, but here are my Zoom tips: Your primary EK will need to be the event host, with a paid Zoom account, so that they can manage the breakout room assignments. You'll want to configure Manual breakout room assignments, and then turn on "Move all participants into breakout rooms automatically," with the other options all unchecked. (So no one can choose to return to the Main session, the Breakout rooms won't automatically close at a certain time, and no Countdown is needed to close a breakout room.) You definitely want these automatic transfers, as otherwise players will have an option to join a new assignment, and you want to force them to jump with no warning. We read online that Zoom breakout rooms don't work with Chrome OS, so we emailed our players that they would need to use a device with a different operating system to connect. This only affected one or two players, who used either a tablet or phone instead, which worked just fine. In our technology pre-tests (which I highly recommend!), we found issues with pre-assigning breakout rooms. Specifically, the automatic/forced movement didn't seem to work with pre-assignments; people logging in had an initial option to either accept or decline a breakout room assignment. To avoid this, we turned on the Zoom waiting room and our EK let players in one by one, acting briefly as a hostess and asking for "the name that appeared on your invitation" before assigning them to a breakout room. With this first appearance in the main room and the breakout room assignment coming at that point, the auto-assign to breakout rooms worked as planned and they had no choice, the system forced them to go. Ask players to open their Zoom chats at the start of the game. It's an easy thing to overlook in Zoom, but especially since Zoom allows private message to any of the players, you want it open before you actually need it. We asked players to change their Zoom display names to "Character First Name (Player First Name)"--so if I was playing Amelia Cosgrove, it would be, "Amelia (Joe)." That grounds players when new faces appear in their Zoom breakout rooms, and crucially, leaves out character last names for the women characters who've taken a spouse's last name in certain realities. We skipped the investigator photos, given no clear approach for including online. While they no doubt lend an air of the surreal, I found something fun in having a player drop into a room, and then 15 minutes later say something like, "I grab Felicity's hand," only for Felicity's player to respond, "Wait... what?!" The slow reveal that the realities were less similar than assumed worked quite well for us. I'm pleased to say we didn't have a single technology hiccup throughout the entire game. Some of that was luck--with a group this large, you can usually count on someone to have headphone or internet connectivity issues--but I was also pleased we didn't make any unforced errors, and credit our 2.5 hours of technology testing and prep that occurred in the week leading up to the event itself. (Although I did play off the initial Amelia disappearance following her fainting as a likely technology issue--"Hopefully she'll be back soon! I guess she stays fainted.") Keeper communication platform: Discord I expect Slack would've worked just as well, but it definitely helped to have a text chat program up and running, as opposed to texting or something. It's relatively easy to consult without your players noticing you're looking away (I was quite surprised to learn none of mine had realized I had a live text chat going throughout the full game); I used a second monitor to display it. It's a huge help to have instantaneous communication, especially around things like when to pull someone, or when the end time has triggered. Our EK would give us a 10 minute warning for which player cycle was about to start, and the order the rooms would be hit. That gave us time to plan and maneuver the looming investigator to a place where the trigger would make sense and/or have the greatest dramatic effect. Our EK let us Room Keepers drive on when to do the grab, so there were some nice dramatic moments where I'd chat a, "Now!" to the EK, and our player would disappear within 15 seconds, and usually within 5. We also used Discord to chat about how quickly our players were piecing together the mystery, and on who had the disk shards in each room--which leads me to... Online play challenge: The disk shards Compared to an in-person game where you have actual disk shards, virtual play means you need to be verbally explicit about who's picking up a disk shard and what they're doing with it, if they're holding onto it, etc. Additionally, communicating that the disk fragment travels into the extra dimension and to the next reality with the player is more challenging. One place our game suffered for being remote was when the Sylvia from my room jumped to the extra dimension and then to another room, where the group had the other two disk shards. The player didn't realize Sylvia still had the disk shard after traveling through dimensions, and even the Keeper of the room privately chatting him in Zoom that "It's your choice what you reveal about your shard" didn't trigger it for him, and it took a follow-up message several minutes later to make him realize the shard was still on his person. My advice: Be 100% explicit about the disk shards. When a player arrives with one (which a Keeper should know from your Discord chat), the Keeper should chat them immediately, "The shard of the disk you had in your possession before is still with you!" Extra Dimension: Multicam approach For our extra dimension, we had a breakout room with our two EKs with video off and the display names "Operator" and "Voices in Your Head," plus one camera fixed on a table with several items on display--a clock, an open journal, a couple of ancient-looking books, etc. The EKs would do some creepy voice and interrogation stuff, tee up the Frozen Moment, and then ask the player, "What would you like to do?" Most of them understood immediately they could interact with the equipment on the table--the very first player asked to write her name on the journal page, and that started a cascade of messages written by players, as well as some attempts to reset the clock hands, etc. Summoning: High tech meets low tech Our possession approach was to have our primary EK chat via Discord to the relevant Room Keeper (with proper warnings that this might be/is approaching) that the summoning was occurring, then to call that Keeper on their cell phone. The Keeper would then answer their cell, and immediately mute it and put it on speaker phone. Then they'd invite their group to ask questions, which the Room Keeper would type into the Discord chat, which the EK would then read to the summoned player, who would reply--both of which could be heard over the speaker phone, piped through the computer mic into Zoom. It worked well enough, although we had a Reverse Summoning that left the recipient very confused--he mostly made statements that went into the Zoom chat and were then read to the summoned individual (including, "Oh great, more timey-wimey stuff"). I can't decide if that bizarre experience was a bug or a feature. Time management: Regularly-scheduled breaks & run-time It's simply true that playing online wears folks out in a way that playing in person doesn't. To help combat this, we built in a 5 minute bio break every 90 minutes, which we communicated to our players in advance (so no one would step away to use the bathroom 10 minutes before a break, when perhaps they were about to be grabbed for some dimension hopping). We were scheduled to run 7 p.m.-midnight (with the true kick-off planned for 7:15, which worked perfectly), so we broke at 8:30, 10, and then 11 so we could finish the rest of the game uninterrupted. We ended up pushing past midnight, with the first room wrapping at 12:25 and the final room (mine) wrapping our end time at 12:40. Post-game: Large group Zoom I expect it's true of the in-person game that tables can wrap a few minutes apart, but it's a little different in Zoom where you're stuck in a breakout room until all rooms are ready to end that setting and jump into the main room together. Of course, the real issue is this means instead of players breaking up into groups to discuss what happened, we had 22 people on one Zoom call at 12:40 a.m. Large group discussions are inherently difficult, and are prone to domination by a few people. I wish I had a better solution for how to make this discussion more like an in-person post-game debrief. On the bright side, people were animated and we still had 8-10 people online and discussing at 2 a.m. when we shut it down. Finally, a big thanks to @Paul Fricker for writing a brilliant scenario that translates so well to online play! At least one seasoned roleplayer said afterward, "I've never played anything like that before!" It was an awesome, memorable experience, and I'm pleased and little proud of how well it went--which really just reflects back on you and how strong the scenario is.

It's a good point--my in-person sessions were usually 3 hours, but with remote play given our current reality, I've moved to 2 hours. Oddly enough, I didn't think through the shortened sessions at first, and kept asking myself, "Why are these scenarios taking so many more sessions to complete? Is virtual adding that much time?" Took me a couple of scenarios before I finally realized, "Oh yeah! We're keeping the session shorter now that we're online!" My question: Is the difficulty a rating for the player to "solve," or for the Keeper to run? I assume the players?

Perfect. Thanks, Paul! This was clarifying for me. Good news: It took about a week longer than I'd hoped, but we have 14 players and four Keepers, and our game is a go for next weekend! I will certainly report back on the other side with how things went. In the meantime, @caddy1071, if you're still willing to share your scenario reference materials, please DM me! They sound very helpful!