Seeking Advice: What to run for 15+ Investigators

[barrelv]

My local gaming club runs our own brand of Organized Play for systems that don't have one. We've had 5 successful seasons of Call of Cthulhu and want to again attempt a cohesive story for our next season. The past few seasons have been a series of 1-shots that were, at best, loosely tied together.

We run six 4-5 hr sessions per season and each session has 3 to 4 tables, each with a different game, that the players get to pick between. so, between 18 and 24 actual games.

Given this highly unusual method (large number of Investigators, simultaneous play, etc), does anyone have any suggestions on what we could pick up as inspiration for our 6th season?

Final note, our players are mostly interested in the 1890s, 1920s, and near-modern settings.

Thanks everyone!

[Joerg]

15 minutes ago, barrelv said:

My local gaming club runs our own brand of Organized Play for systems that don't have one. We've had 5 successful seasons of Call of Cthulhu and want to again attempt a cohesive story for our next season. The past few seasons have been a series of 1-shots that were, at best, loosely tied together.

We run six 4-5 hr sessions per season and each session has 3 to 4 tables, each with a different game, that the players get to pick between. so, between 18 and 24 actual games.

Given this highly unusual method (large number of Investigators, simultaneous play, etc), does anyone have any suggestions on what we could pick up as inspiration for our 6th season?

Final note, our players are mostly interested in the 1890s, 1920s, and near-modern settings.

Thanks everyone!

Back when I ran local conventions, I experimented with several independent groups researching the same setting at the same time. We prepared a bunch of locations with encounters, information, etc, and if one party chose to go there, the GM would grab the location write-up and set off to run it for his party. If a second party approached the same locations, the GMs would exchange info, and the parties would become their mutual encounters.

If I had to do this for Cthulhu, I guess I would undust my Mythos CCG and select locations, potential allies or at least sources of information from there, and apply it to investigative roleplaying rather than the CCG rules.

And yes, this would bring the different parties of investigators into direct influence of cultists plotting against other cultists. It isn't "shoot any caped person wielding a grimoire" style of pulp. Investigators would be encouraged to dabble in Mythos magics, to learn from their semi-monstrous contacts. It might include sending one type of Mythos creature to combat another.

Player characters might end up as full cultists, in which case they would step over to the cousins/nephews/etc. And not every cultist will want to end the world tomorrow, some may be in almost sane campaigns of consolidating power.

But that's a somewhat different topic, playing CoC in Mythos CCG style. Anyway, the Mythos CCG offers plenty of locations and leads, and might prove as good GMing tools for a multi-party game.

[barrelv]

something I didn't mention and should have:

All Investigators are members of "The Miskatonic Society", a group formed on Miskatonic University to research and ultimately stop eldritch horror.

[mvincent]

On 4/19/2018 at 10:58 AM, barrelv said:

We run six 4-5 hr sessions per season and each session has 3 to 4 tables, each with a different game, that the players get to pick between. so, between 18 and 24 actual games.

Some ideas using popular campaigns:

Masks of Nyarlathotep: the most popular campaign ever, with plenty of additional props and material available. I ran this at conventions by condensing in each chapter/country into a 4-hour session (not easy, but I was pleased with the results). Since it's a sandbox environment, this might be suitable for a multi-table experience where each referee could specialize in a particular chapter, and the players could decide each session (except for the first) which table/country to go to next.

Horror on the Orient Express: this is well produced, contained, 7th edition, and most chapters/countries are easy to convert to a 4-5 hour session. Though normally linear, the chapters (except for the first/last) could be handled in any order like the sandbox above, allowing each referee to focus on one location.

Beyond the Mountains of Madness: though popular, the source material here was hardest to prep... so I made the best of it and ran three different groups/expeditions concurrently (on different nights, but they still interacted). Since the book already detailed multiple expeditions, I just turned all those NPC's into PC's, and altered each chapter slightly so it pertained to the expedition I was running at the time. Doing this with multiple neighboring tables could be even more fun, with each group racing to be the first to the antarctic.

Edited April 20, 2018 by mvincent

[barrelv]

One of our STs has Horror, I'll give it a look. And I think Masks is set to get it's 7th edition release soon, so that might be perfect timing for us to research it for our 2019 season

[MJ Sadique]

On 19/04/2018 at 7:58 PM, barrelv said:

We run six 4-5 hr sessions per season and each session has 3 to 4 tables, each with a different game, that the players get to pick between. so, between 18 and 24 actual games.

Given this highly unusual method (large number of Investigators, simultaneous play, etc), does anyone have any suggestions on what we could pick up as inspiration for our 6th season?

As mvincent said Masks of Nyarlathotep is very adapted because it's  world wide 1920's campaign all over the word (USA / London / Paris / Africa / China+Japan / Australia ). It's adapted to multiple table play because each table could send "telegram" to another team; The telegram could be some informations to share between each tables.

The Dreamlands (https://www.chaosium.com/h-p-lovecrafts-dreamlands-pdf/) also offert great liberties in play for various type of plays n' settings. I've got a peculiar luck to have all dreamlands get re-edited in french deluxe box set (the images after). The very good thing is that dreamlands are not only another world but you can also use the door of dreams to travel through time and space. I had an excellent convention scenario in Scotland's V century but my players team was in 1920; with the help of the door to dreamlands, i was able to send them there... And after the recent Pacific RIM 2, I think I'll adapt a Cthulhutech quickstart scenario to send them in far future fighting Migos in giant mecha.

With this you can fight Nyarlatothep in any location and time. You could also do Jumanji theme scenario or Doctor Who fighting The Great Intelligence (an avatar or Yog-Sothoth as state in http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Intelligence).

French Dreamlands Deluxe Box

http://www.sans-detour.com/shop/sans-detour/jeux-de-role/l-appel-de-cthulhu-7e-edition/256-les-contrees-du-reve.html