Scritch Scratch: The Film Crew?

[barrelv]

Prepping this for Saturday and am stumped at the reasoning behind 4 of the NPCs

Why is a film crew following around a two-person cleaning operation? This seems like the last thing the Muscoby Council would want. Am I missing something major?

[nclarke]

Have you seen any of the crappy things they put together to show on the TV?  People who rummage around in junk yards for pricey collectables, debt collectors who everyone watches to see if they get their lights punched out or if someone takes a shotgun to them. We've had documentaries about the people who remove the fatbergs from London's sewers - riveting TV I'm sure). Plus having heard when and where the scenario was originally written (on a plane to Gencon IIRC) I'm pleasantly surprised how well it turned out with some more polish and decent mappage.

[barrelv]

That's really close to what I'm putting together in my head - someone reminded me we have a Reality TV Show in the States that just follows around an Exterminator. I think I'll tweak the player descriptions and really lean into this angle.

Thanks!

Edited June 11, 2018 by barrelv

[DMarcel]

To pick a nit there are three cleaners and three film crew. 

Edited June 11, 2018 by DMarcel

[Loren Dean]

I'm also finding a lot of the details pretty tenuously connected. They can be connected, but this looks like a scenario you can't just skim and then run. To be fair, none of them are really like that, but SS is taking even more prep from me than normal.

To try and reinforce the who's who of the pregens, I'm creating an opening script the players can read out in script form (like a radio play). It runs like the opening scene of a B-list reality show, and puts the startup exposition, some initial character RP hints, and a couple of action hooks into the mouths of the players. I'm hoping it both saves time and helps get "that one guy" into the notion of being the hot but unambitious sound girl. We'll see if it works. 

[morganhua]

I'm making mine a Dirty Jobs / Historical Look at Villages / Reality TV show.  Contract work for Channel 5. The incentive is that the film crew just got their foot in the door for this show and this is basically their only and last chance. If they abort the show, their reputation is dead and they'll never work in TV again.

So, the show is to explore the interesting historical background of a rural village and to do some cleaning and maybe turn up some items of historical value. 

[xthawx]

I ran this at my FLGS today and did so with a single read through. Ran perfectly. It's a slow build and a climactic ending. Sure, there is a small need for a little nudging of the players, but mine (one experienced CoC player, two who have played the quickstep, and three first timers) worked through the clues with very little need for additional guidance. I thought it was an excellent scenario. It is very close in theme to a scenario I have written for Trail of Cthulhu, so I had that as a good background to help me run it.

[Indigo Clardmond]

I ran it today as well with a game group I'd never been a part of before, but had been invited to join. I was originally just going to be a player, but I suddenly was requested to run it in by virtue of the fact their pack got cancelled at the last minute and thus, as the only one with access to it, I quickly had to go over it and prepare as much as I could. I'm a relatively inexperienced Keeper, only done Time for Harvest, and that was online and we only got about halfway through the campaign before the group sort of broke up, but I found it worked well and it was enjoyable enough. I think everyone there was a newbie to Call of Cthulhu, but some were quite knowledgeable about Lovecraft, so it was fun seeing them trying to guess what was going on. I think the one guy pretty much guessed it the minute he saw the rats strung up in the woods, twigging a sacrificial dynamic between them and the Green Man. Managed to keep a straight face. There were a few moments where I felt I was nudging them a bit, one even said, "I feel like you really want us to go to Appleford," and didn't see the merit in doing so, despite the fact I'd actually gotten a brilliant story excuse to make at least one of them go there when they called up the police to report the illegal chemicals and needed to go down to prove their identity and make a statement before they'd be allowed to dispose of them. Still, they all seemed to enjoy it and I gave them largely free reign to see what happened.

They seemed to accept the reality TV show of cleaners quite easily, "Shirley" in particular really got into her role, mugging for the camera, super getting into the story and even got a bit heroic at the end wanting to become Muscoby's new rat catcher to appease The Green Man/Narly, finding a new purpose in it, with her husband determinedly going with her to burn it all down and save her, probably fixing their apparently rocky marriage. The film crew and their nephew completely nope'd out and floored it after Appleford, managed to push through the rats with their van on a pushed roll and never looked back. I will say though my 'that one guy' who was also playing the hot but unambitious girl was a bit less keen on the roleplay aspects and lack of a real 'encounter' til the end. Which he ironically missed by wussing out haha. 

[barrelv]

For anyone who stumbles back into this thread, I went full-in on the Reality TV angle and the players loved it. By leading with "Yes, Paul is so egotistical that he thinks he deserves to be on television and has convinced everyone else to go in on this crazy TV pilot," it immediately got everyone motivated and moving. They interviewed people, did prelim camera work for establishing shots, it was great. The players loved the module, even with 2 dead and 2 others locked up next to Old Gurteen in the mental ward by the end of it.

So very different than last year's The Derelict, but still a great one-shot (and intro to Call of Cthulhu). 

Edited July 5, 2018 by barrelv
Paul, not Simon