Guidance for The Cult of Chaos - from Mike Mason

[MOB]

Guidance For The Cult Of Chaos

from Mike Mason

Thank you for agreeing to run A Time to Harvest!

I hope that you and your players will have an exciting, fun, and horrifying time playing through this new six-part campaign for Call of Cthulhu. To help assist you, dear Keeper, here follow some notes and guidance.

Structure and Format

Each month you will receive a new episode of the campaign. The first ‘pack’ sent out will include the following material:

• Chapter 1: Introduction and Campaign Background
• Chapter 2: The Town of Cobb’s Corners
• Chapter 3: Episode One
• Spell Appendix

Chapters 1 and 2 provide key information that will be of use throughout the running of the campaign. Chapter 3 is the start of the campaign proper. The Spell Appendix provides updated spells that may be referred to and used by NPCs during the campaign (in addition to those found in the Call of Cthulhu Keeper’s Rulebook). Thereafter, each month, you will receive one document containing the next episode of the campaign, which ends when you receive Episode Six.

Game Time

Each episode should be completed in about a month – naturally, some groups will meet weekly, others fortnightly, others maybe just once a month. Trying to keep everyone on the same time track just isn’t feasible, so if you finish an episode early or late, no worries. We’ll release each chapter on a monthly basis and then it’s down to you how and when you run it. Episodes One and Two have the potential to run long, but allow the Keeper to decide when major events take place, allowing you to time things for your group. Later episodes have a sharper focus, with less scope for ancillary sidetracks, so you’ll probably get through these more quickly. Ultimately, though, you decide the timing and have fun.

No pre-generated investigators are provided. Guidance is given on creating Miskatonic U students, and one of the things we’d like to hear about is the differing PCs your players create for the campaign – we might even ask you for copies of investigators to use in the published version!

Playtest Feedback

Rolling out A Time to Harvest through the Cult of Chaos gives us all a chance to thoroughly play test the campaign before it’s formatted for full publication. Thus, I’d like to hear your feedback on what worked well or what didn’t work so well. Likewise, if you spot any typos or inconsistences, please let us know. Rather than sending in drips of feedback, and to help me keep a handle on things, please gather any feedback or corrections, per campaign episode, into one document and email it to mike@chaosium.com.

In terms of format, I’d be grateful if you used the following convention for corrections, amendments, etc.

• Chapter or Episode: number
• Page: number
• Paragraph: number (count from top)
• Line: number (count from top)
• Correction: state the nature of the correction

E.g.

Ep 2, page 14, para 3, line 6 – insert comma after “big tentacle” Ep 4, page 3, para 2, line 2 – “Yug-Sothot” is misspelt – Yog- Sothoth

Sending such corrections, as well as general feedback, for one episode at a time in one concise document, once per month will help immensely. Thanks.

In addition, I’d like you include any feedback on how key campaign events went when you ran them. If you are able to send one or two paragraphs describing what your players did (or what you did) that would be great – approximately no more than 100-200 words. We may feature some of these in the final publication and credit you!

Mutual Support

We’ve set up this thread on the Call of Cthulhu message board here at www.basicroleplaying.org - so you can share experiences and advice with other Cult of Chaos Keepers during the course of running the campaign. Please feel free to post up pictures of your games in action.

So, there you have it. Many thanks for supporting this campaign and Chaosium. Your work in helping to run Call of Cthulhu across the world is greatly appreciated. It’s one of the fantastic things about working with Chaosium – it’s such a large extended family!

Cthulhu fhtagn!

Mike Mason

Line Editor, Call of Cthulhu

Chaosium Inc.

mike@chaosium.com

www.chaosium.com

[oberonkestral]

Quote

 

The Time To Harvest Organized play is an interesting approach - Very CoC in it's depth, a more extensive play test style than a traditional Organized Play. I have been pretty involved over the years with the various "Living" campaigns such as Living Greyhawk, Living Death (Masque of the Red Death), Living Arcanis, and of course Pathfinder Society for the last 8 years. 

Really looking forward on how best to handle the campaign, especially if it will fit into the traditional game store or convention play Organized Play scene. I have run CoC events since mid 80's and this will be an interesting challenge. This forum will be a great help in these new waters... splash....paddle...and a Deep One, oh dear....

--michael

[Corsario]

Thank you very much for the chance to play Call of Cthulhu again. I'll let you know how my game goes.

[aries04]

This will be my first campaign in Call of Cthulhu. I've played many RPGs before, but this Organized Play format works very well for those of us without a regular group and reduced free time. Really looking forward to playing and contributing to the playtest. Thanks!!

[Baniak]

This will be my first time running an Organized Play. I have just finished reading aTtH and it's great, cant wait for all those subplots mentioned in the scenario to happen (like murders). Great job.

[mibagents]

I can't seem to find the event report form, can you point me to it please?

[joggiwagga]

email the following to Dustin - dustin@chaosium.com

Event Report

• Gamemaster Name:
• Gamemaster Email:
• Event host contact Name:
• Event Host Contact Email:
• Event Host Contact Phone Number:
• Date of event:
• Venue:
• Did you notify us of this event in advance?:
• Number of game sessions run:
• Number of game participants (must be at least 3 for catalog credit):
• Chaosium Game System demonstrated:
• Participant email addresses for those who wish to receive email updates from Chaosium:
• Did everyone have fun?:
• What sort of feedback did participants/hosts have for you?
• Tell us about your event! 100 word minimum, 500 word maximum: