Discussing Alone Against the Dark

[klecser]

Hey all,

 

I'm looking for tips on how you play Alone Against the Dark.  Here's my context:

I just completed my first play through.  It took me over a dozen hours and I feel like at best I accomplished absolutely nothing and at worst the author is laughing at deliberately trolling me.  I did not enjoy it.  Yes, I'm in charge of managing my own perspective on my enjoyment.  I understand that, to an extent, CoC is about torturing yourself.  My lack of enjoyment is not because I didn't win.  My problems are with the design of the scenario.   I have nagging concerns about how possible it is to win without unbelievable luck, multiple successful consecutive rolls in various points, and deliberate ignoring of rules.  AATD is clearly a member of the old-school mentality of adventure design.  It is rife with Gygaxian "Gotcha! You lose because you chose the wrong random decision! Ha, you fool!" moments.  I also believe that there are at least three places where temporary insanity is almost assured, and if you follow the rules for temporary insanity, it is impossible to continue with the scenario from that point forward. Because few (none?) of the places that it would happen to you would be safe. I understand that part of the scenario is about struggling with what skills your characters need at any given point.  At times I found myself realizing I needed a skill, an investigator perishing, coming back with that skill, only to find one moment later that there was ANOTHER needed skill, that investigator perishing, and having to repeat the whole process.

Looking at the forest for the trees, I understand that designing a Choose Your Own Adventure-style for CoC comes with it a whole bunch of risks.  Part of GMing is striking a balance between mechanics and story. I think AATD is an example of a scenario that suffers without some alteration of the rules or extreme metagaming. I think AATD, while richly designed, is too complex for this format.  Because from a player psychological standpoint, there is nothing more demoralizing than having to take a new character through a whole travel experience just to have them get killed immediately, again. That's just bad story-telling. You may say:  "Well, you figure out what skills are needed in each section and place a characters "spare" points in those skills."  So, what we really have then is the illusion of choice with picking skills.  You don't really have a choice in your skills. Your only real choice is to pay attention and then always choose the same skills.  Sorry, but I hate "guess what I'm thinking" gaming. There was also a point where, if I extreme metagamed, the most logical option would have been for me to call in another character. The scenario doesn't specify that you can have a character "quit" to bring in a "fresh" one. But if this is really about metagamng, then that is what I should be able to do.

So, my question for all of you is:  In what ways have you successfully GMed yourself and the mechanics of this scenario?  What balance have you struck between chance mechanics and ignoring temporary insanity?  How much do you metagame this scenario on subsequent playthroughs?  If you have played to the letter of the rules and have been successful, I'd really like some insight into how that transpired for you.  Because I'm straining to believe that it is possible to win the scenario, even on multiple playthroughs, and even with fore-knowledge.

Edited February 25, 2018 by klecser

[Questbird]

I played this one as a sort of semi-GM'ed experience. That is, I ran one player through and made a few judgement calls throughout which maybe slightly relaxed the constraints of the CYOA style, though sticking with the book rules as much as possible. That said, my player did finish it successfully. He used the supplied characters. I think he went through one or two of them before he succeeded -- he did get caught by a couple of the Mwa-haha moments you mention. It is a harsh scenario. He won as I recall, by short-circuiting a lot of the later parts of the book, but that was his adventure.