Ep 4 - Play Results

[morganhua]

Session 1.  Took 4 hours, but will probably take more to finish.

I decided to leave the Zoogs and John Jeffreys and the Dream Gate from Ep 1 in the game. And not have FOC clear them out as per instructions in Ep 3.  I did drop the kidnapped girl sub-plot.  I did this for pacing reasons as the players didn't really follow up on That Crazy Old Farmer nor Looking for the Widow Cratchett, so I needed something for them to do.

 

On day 2, I had Morrison and Drake hike to the fake coordinates the swapped Geology students used for the meteorite crater.  Some PCs went with them.  No crater was found.  They hiked around some more thinking that the coordinates were possibly inaccurate.

 

One day 3, they went in force into The Enchanted Woods and killed a Zoog and the Moon Beast did hurt a PC before they killed it.  They put John Jeffreys out of his misery, as per his request, and I shut down the Dream Gate, but left an inactive gate made of Pasquallium as a clue.

 

On day 4, While Dr. Matherson examined the Pasquallium gate and excavated Jeffrey's body, the PCs finally visited the Widow Cratchett.

 

On the 4th night, I had the Dark Young attack even though they hadn't spoke with Cuzra since the PCs already had drawings of evil trees from the children from Ep 1.  I think there's enough of a connection between the children and the Dark Young without Cuzra's clues.

 

The PCs mainly fled and let Morrison and Drake get captured by the Dark Young. The PCs did hear gunfire and explosions in the distance (the FOC military camp being attacked).  I had the FOC soldiers show up who wanted to follow the kidnapped Morrison, but the PCs declined to help.  The soldiers did tell the PCs where the military camp was.

 

The PCs decided to return to Cobbs Corners and I had them do a Spot Hidden and notice Dark Young attacking Cobbs Corners (trees moving around Cobbs Corners which mainly had single story houses).  They then decided to go to the FOC military camp and found the soldiers slaughtered there.

 

That's where we left it.

[morganhua]

Session 2.  Took 1.5 hours.

They decided to find a hillock, a few hundred yards from the FOC military camp, and park their truck in the lee there for the night.  They set watch and I made them make luck rolls to see when the Mi-Go and Dark Young come back to clean up stragglers.  The PC on watch made a hard listen roll, so I had him notice the rumbling footsteps of the Dark Young approaching.  Later, I had them make listen rolls for the buzz of flying Mi-Go.  Knowing the danger was approaching, they setup the truck to drive by itself into the woods as a distraction.

Two players were absent, so they split the party in two.  All the NPCs in one group and the active PCs in another group.  In Trail of Cthulhu, there's piggy backing on Stealth which doesn't exist in CoC.   I also find that making each PC roll stealth isn't fair, as someone in the group always fails the roll, so instead, I have them make a group Stealth roll, much like the group Luck roll, the player with the lowest Stealth rolls for the whole group.  The PCs made a hard Stealth and I rolled a 100 for the NPC group, so they got "captured."

The PCs then approached Cobb's Corners again and watched as about a dozen Dark Young destroyed some houses and killed people there.  Unwilling to cross the bridge into town, they decided to head south, following the river that skirted Cobb's Corners.

The PCs have no intention of trying to rescue the captured PCs and NPCs and decided to just Stealth and move south through the forest.  So, the PCs completely avoided the Mi-Go base.  I left them on the edge of the river as this is similar to the end of Ep 4 if they had gone to the Mi-Go base.  So hopefully, I can bridge Ep 4 and Ep 5 easily.

I've decided that when the two absent players return, I'll run their split party and see if they really got captured, killed, or escaped.  This happened near the FOC military camp, so lethal force might be used here vs the Farmhouse.

[morganhua]

Session 3, Took 0.5 hours.

I attacked the split party PCs with two flying Mi-Go with electric guns.  After the first round of attack, the PCs fled and hid in the woods (Mi-Go rolled 98 and totally couldn't find the split party). The PCs went towards Cobb's Corners, noted the Dark Young there, refused to cross the bridge, and headed south along the river.  So, probably very near the other group of PCs and I'll be able to unify them for Ep 5.

[Cthulhus_Voicemail]

My group is starting episode 4 next week. Reading your play reports is definitely helpful for me!

[morganhua]

I read Ep 5 and it mainly concerns Cobb's Corner.  So, I might try to corral them there.  I'll use the preset encounters out in the forest and will let them run into Alexandru Cuzra’s Last Stand.  Mrs. Bellweather is too far away, at the other end of the valley, so they won't visit her.  They did mention it in the previous session, but decided against it as it takes 1/2 a day to reach her.  I'll have to make Cobb's Corner the eye of the storm and see if they head there.  I'll have to use Red Signs, Dark Young, and possibly have to kill or injure a few PCs to make them go to Cobb's Corner.  I like Stalemate and Test and I'll see if I can shoehorn one or both in before they enter Cobb's Corner.

[trevlix]

Did your players go to the MiGo base in ep 4?

[morganhua]

43 minutes ago, trevlix said:

Did your players go to the MiGo base in ep 4?

No.  There was great aversion to going there.  I tried twice to get them there, but their reaction was run away.  The Dark Young was just too dangerous for them to confront.  They wanted to get the farthest away from the Dark Young as possible.  I was only able to capture two NPCs and the PCs were willing to let them be taken away.  Maybe if I captured a PC, they might have tried something, but I'm not sure.  Then you might be stuck with a dead or missing PC which the Keeper forced, which seems unfair.

[trevlix]

My players had the same reaction. There was no way they were going to follow the Dark Young. I'm very curious to hear from any groups that did, and how their Keeper got them to go.

[theslasher99]

my group decided to try the fighting route instead of fleeing, and the dark young got a hold of one of the pcs as well as 2 of the party's npcs before being driven off by gunfire and the backup showing up to some effect. my group has also run into a few points where they cant decide amongst themselves what to do and turn to one of the npcs that was with them, which i used to steer them in the right direction, that being said, the base was rather deadly. going in there was 3 pcs along with morrison and his tommy gun and matherson and her .38. the party consisted of a priest in training more or less, a ROTC student, and a pilot to be, the ROTC character being the most combat adept but also having suffered indefinite insanity when the dark young attacked the farmhouse. they raised alarm in the first computer room they found by taking down the mi-go scientists there, but were adept enough at stealth to avoid the mi-go soldiers once they showed up until they found the captives room and were on the way out, more than one player fumbled a stealth roll, so i had them knocking a number of things over in a storage room, drawing in a few soldiers, in the ensuing firefight, two pc's went down with major wounds, and one succumbed to his wounds before he could be tended to. but the gang scarpered off into one of the drains shortly after before more trouble could show up. we more or less finished chapter 5 today which went rather quick due to the party avoiding potential danger and seeking out the town for shelter/way out of the valley. they met up with replacement characters (the one that died in the base and one that died fleeing the attack on the farmhouse) en route to the b team camp, the replacement characters were rolled in as part of the backup team, a merc and a back up investigation team member who escaped the slaughter due to fleeing/temporary insanity. they got the gyst of what happened there and went closer to town before becoming wary of the things going down and skirting around the outside of town looking for operational vehicles (which they were unsuccessful) before deciding to seek shelter or possibly a boat at the port and warehouses at the north end of town. on the way they spotted what was going down at the memorial before getting to the sheriffs offices in search of weapons/supplies, having ruined much of their ammo escaping the base. they found the powder and fuses and put 2 and 2 together, deciding to be heroes. 3 of the 4 pc's decided to try to disrupt what was going on at the memorial and the most wounded member (the one that was stabilized at the base) went on to the warehouse with morrison and matherson who were both wounded. they were successful in their stealth to get the cannon loaded and fired while two others fired at the deputy from the best distace they could before fleeing, they managed to do a crazy amount of damage to cutter and outright killed him and caused enough chaos to give the townsfolk a chance to escape, but the arrival of shub-niggurath as they were fleeing to their rendeveauz point caused two characters to go insane outright and one to lapse into a bout of madness. so as it sits beginning chapter 6 we have two investigators that have survived since chapter 1 but are barely hanging on, one has less than 25 sanity left and the other has 1 hp, and the other two realized fully the glory of the mother.

this turned out to be more than just a "how i got them into the migo base" but i didnt think it was enough to warrant a new thread. my players have been a combination of brazen and avoiding smaller confrontations. 
im interested in seeing where they go with chapter 6, what with cobb's corners decimated and shub-niggurath having departed.