Harvest or Train?

[Moes1980]

Hello everyone, I was just wondering if I could get some advice. I have both the Time to Harvest material and the new Horror on the Orient Express. I also ran a one shot game at my local store, and everyone had a blast and is looking forward to starting a regular game. So I have a group of players too! The only problem is, I can't decide which to run, Harvest or train? I am really tempted to start Orient Express with the gaslight era scenario as a prologue, but I also love the crazy story in Harvest, which will really freak out my players. The train adventure looks like it will take a long time, which makes me lean towards Harvest, but then again, I did pay an arm and a leg for that box set. For those experienced with both campaigns, which would you recommend?

[mvincent]

15 hours ago, Moes1980 said:

Harvest or train?

Train. I strongly preferred it, and it's currently a more 'finished' product. Harvest felt like it had 'early draft' issues that I hope will be fixed in the final version.

[morganhua]

For my gaming groups: A Time to Harvest took 6 months to run.  Horror on the Orient Express will took 2 years to run.

aTtH had a higher death rate than HotOE.  Depends on whether your players are OK with frequent PC death.

[Moes1980]

Thank you guys! Based on your feedback I think I am going to go with the train. I think it will be better to run a scenario that does not have as much player death, as I want my players to experience a sense of advancement (and one player is interested in learning to cast spells, though he has no idea the dangers that actually entails). Also, I think I can run this adventure in about 8-12 months. We seem to clip along at a pretty good pace, and I am considering skipping the dream lands scenarios, along with some others (like the doom train), but we will see. I think I can complete most scenarios in a session, with a few taking 2-3 sessions to finish. I might try to fit in an occasional weekend marathon session as well, where we play for 6 hours or more to try to knock parts of it out. If it ends up taking much longer than I thought, so be it, that just means more mileage out of my investment  (I am pretty new running this game, with only two sessions under my belt, so I could easily be underestimating the time it will take to finish this).

I am going to see if I can get a fez hat before I run the blood red fez scenario as a prologue. That optional adventure has really hooked me in. I might see if I can get other people at the store to walk in randomly wearing a fez just to get under my player's skin! (I am hoping that I can find some cheap ones from a Halloween store). 

[morganhua]

My group hated the Dream Land optional scenarios and the Dark Ages optional scenario.  The Doom Train is short and is very atmospheric, but not needed.

My favorite part is the optional London (Red Fez) 1893 scenario.  It is quite long, not sure you can run that in one session.

[L Kelly]

On 21/09/2016 at 7:53 AM, Moes1980 said:

 "one player is interested in learning to cast spells, though he has no idea the dangers that actually entails"

That is just beautiful, please details of the session when it really goes wrong with that players spells

[Moes1980]

On 21/09/2016 at 7:37 PM, morganhua said:

My group hated the Dream Land optional scenarios and the Dark Ages optional scenario.  The Doom Train is short and is very atmospheric, but not needed.

My favorite part is the optional London (Red Fez) 1893 scenario.  It is quite long, not sure you can run that in one session.

 

 

We just did our first session, and we started with this scenario. They were really glad I did, as now they have a good idea what kind of skills and backgrounds to focus on for the main campaign. So far, one character managed to sneak into the Myer's cabin and steal the Whispering Fez tome, but no one can read Persian, so they are having to rely on Baron Von Hofler's expertise. They don't fully trust him, so one character is going to stay up all night with him while he tries to decipher the tome. Just as they pull into the next stop he will try to mesmerize him to sleep so he can still the book and the red fez (the players actually bought multiple hats to use as decoys to confuse the cultists, but of course, they showed the baron the real hat!). I plan to have the spell wear off with just enough time for the player to jump off the train if he wants to chase the baron down alone, or he can stay on the train with his friends. He won't have to put up too much of a fight, however, as his daughter will be there with her allies, and will be all too happy to rid herself of those things as she tries to get her father psychiatric help, but of course, he will miss the train and have to make the overland journey to the next stop in order to board the train.This would be a blessing in disguise, however, as the shadows will attack the investigators for the first time tonight (the one player who might get left off the train is the only one to have seen them so far, and the one time there was almost a combat (when he was trying to steal the whispering fez tome) he ran away, and the shadow could not follow as there was too much sunlight. 

Yes, it is longer than I thought! I thought we could do it in maybe two sessions, but now I think it will be tough to do it in less than three. The players pretty much skipped the initial investigations in London, which saved a lot of time. Though, they did learn about the murder of the Fez collector when they went out shopping for multiple decoy fez hats! 

[Moes1980]

12 hours ago, L Kelly said:

That is just beautiful, please details of the session when it really goes wrong with that players spells

Will do! He got his hands on his first mythos tome the last session, but he could not read it as he did not know the language it was written in. I am sure when he makes his own character before kicking off the main campaign, he will take several languages. Oh, the poor soul lol