Call of Cthulhu Session Roadmap

[ColoradoCthulhu]

After not playing CoC for over thirty years (really - we played what was probably 3rd edition at my high school gaming club back in 1987), I started back up as a Keeper in May 2019. Our biweekly group just finished the three scenarios in the CoC Starter Set and will complete the 'The Haunting' from the 7th edition Quickstart Rules at our next session.

After that I plan on running the two scenarios included with the Keeper Rulebook, followed by the two scenarios included with the Keeper Screen Pack. I would then run classic 1920s scenarios from both the 'Doors to Darkness' and 'Nameless Horrors' supplements. Our group is chronologically in September 1922 at the moment, so this date affects what I might do next.

From what I can gather, the 'Horror on the Orient Express' campaign is set from January 1923 to March 1923 and 'Masks of Nyarlathotep' is set in 1925. As both of these 7th edition campaigns include printed handouts with specific dates for the Investigators, it would probably make sense to run these campaigns in their chronological order. I would prefer to run Masks first, however, as Orient Express is only available as a PDF doc but I would go to the trouble and expense of having the entire campaign printed out as a physical book for my reference.

Of the 7th edition scenarios available from Chaosium as of 2019, what should I run after the Keeper material scenarios if I want our group's dates to be consistent? I also intend to run the Organized Play campaigns ('A Time to Harvest' and 'Flotsam and Jetsam') after these campaigns are available for sale as printed books. I don't want to touch the earlier edition scenarios that haven't been converted to 7th edition until I exhaust what is available now for the 7th edition (I am lazy that way).

[ColoradoCthulhu]

I posted something similar to the above request in the 'Call of Cthulhu Role-Playing Game & Players' Facebook Group and received several dozen replies. I've decided that I'm not going to worry about the exact dates for now and just run Masks of Nyarlathotep as our first campaign. Once we are done with the material I have already picked out, our group should be somewhere in late 1924 so the Masks campaign does actually fit our chronological sequence. Orient Express will just remain on the back burner until Chaosium releases an updated slipcase version of the campaign, hopefully with the issues from the 1st and 2nd editions ironed out.

 

 

Edited September 1, 2019 by ColoradoCthulhu

[Joe Kenobi]

Glad you found what you were looking for. When I run scenarios, I usually try to stick to the dates and months, but I adjust the years as needed--either by literally adjusting the handouts, or by asking my players to assume every year they see is in fact two years earlier. So, if my most recent scenario was set in June 1923, for example, I might run a scenario set in August next, and just make it August 1923 through one of those two methods.