Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Post Adventure Thoughts - The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen

Snapshot of my notes that I printed out based on the Retired Adventurer’s Better Notes series of blog posts. These were very helpful all the way through the adventure.
 

General Thoughts

Overall, The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen was incredibly fun and very educational. My skills as an RPG referee have undoubtedly improved over the course of this adventure, and the longer narrative arc allowed for a lot of immersion and memorable character moments. The dark humour and Lovecraft flavour both come through strongly in this one. The way we played it, it wasn’t very horror focused, it felt more like a Lovecraft themed adventure than a spook fest or an eerie mood piece. I think the dark aspects could be played up though, with the right group.

The module will require a lot of quick thinking from the GM and a little extra seasoning to fill in the blanks throughout. There’s 41 locations and a lot of them are just a single paragraph. There are events and NPCs hinted at, but not fully fleshed out. This will be a challenge for newer GM but I do think it’s a challenge worth taking on as it will be good practice.

Layout

The layout is pretty to look at, but hard to reference at the table. Looking at the city map and then flicking forward to the locations to match them felt like spinning plates, especially with no distinct city landmarks or districts to orient around.

The text is also very densely packed in there. It’s the Merry Mushmen editing flavour, which I appreciated in a dense zine of articles to be read like Knock, but for adventure layout I found myself frustrated with it. It also has a fair few typos to watch out for.

Length

I did not expect this adventure to last 15 sessions. That’s something I wish I’d known going in. I’ll know better from now on what kind of things make an adventure long and “sticky” – lots of things for PCs to trip over and get involved in. This one could really double up as a city setting, as Brad and Yochai mentioned on their podcast review recently.

Expectations

In addition to understanding the proper length of a given game, I learned too that tone is an important thing to consider before diving into a game. I didn’t quite anticipate the tone that this adventure would take, and I think I was expecting a bit more Elric due to the tone of the core rulebook. That was really my own mistake, since the adventure text is very clearly Lovecraftian in tone, and I should have just adjusted based on that.

Rules preference

I’ve also refined my personal palette for what I enjoy in RPGs over this game, as well. I’ve decided that Black Sword Hack is a little on the light side for me when it comes to longer games. Some of the aspects, like player-facing rolls and roll-under ability checks as a core mechanic, are not things I gelled with, and I often found myself wanting to rule things differently.

I don’t like roll under ability checks as a core component because they tie roll outcomes too strongly to ability scores. In contrast, other games such as Delving Deeper only give players a small bonus to certain actions if their Strength score is 15+. This de-emphasises ability scores, and emphasises player strategy, character traits and usage of things like items, environment, etc.

Balancing

I also think that if you were to run this game system yourself, you may need to house rule a few of those background special powers. At-will invisibility and assassination were the most potent combination, and the two players were able to trivialise quite a few encounters throughout this adventure. It’s okay to have these things tempered a little either in-fiction or simply as an agreed upon house rule.

Variety

Something I really enjoyed was introducing variety throughout the adventure. In session #8, the players took the role of two different characters for a session (I used A Man on the Road and it was awesome). In session #14, I used By This Poleaxe to run a large-scale city skirmish, “zooming out” the action from the two main characters. These diversions were fun dashes of heterogeneity to the adventure that I think worked very well and served to flesh out elements of the world that wouldn’t be accessible through the eyes of the two usual player characters.

 

Thanks,

Feirsteax

 

The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen #15

Finale (played 03/09/2024)

System: The Black Sword Hack
Adventure: The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen (from The Chaos Crier issue #0)
Players: Faaya (Capingreen), Kvam (Janitor911)
GM: Me (Feirsteax)
Session length: 4h ish 

 

Incomplete snippet of campaign notes taken using OneNote for this adventure.

Explosions in the Deep

The players ingeniously brought a big barrel of gunpowder with them to blast open the portcullis below the temple and were therefore able to enter the evil Black Sun Temple from below!

This did not spare them, however, from a cruel ambushing at the hands of four Deep Infiltrators of the Black Sun, who had been tailing them in secret for some time now. These four assassins were quite brutal, and through the battle, managed to kill all of the player characters’ allies (including poor old Bonifacio, the dog-shaver and secret hit-man for hire).

The rules for inter-NPC combat in Black Sword Hack mean that PC allies will take d6 damage four times in six. It felt a bit too punishing and NPC allies tended to die quite quickly.

I prefer when NPC actions are simply ruled the same as PCs. When players ask their hirelings to do weird non-combat actions, you just rule it as you would a PC.

So much I didn't use in here
Sarakasas the Mad

They pushed through the depths of the temple, clearing rooms of any tentacled Deep Ones that they encountered thanks to the insta-killing power of the newly acquired Roodr.

Upstairs, in the central chamber, they saw a gruesome scene. Sarakasas was acting like a one-man army, standing atop a pile of corpses as rebels came forward to slash at him in total vain. Sarakasas was completely impervious to damage from non-Roodr sources, and it led to this terrifying outcome.

Faaya spotted someone lurking in the alcoves – it was the leader of the Thieves Guild, Zvoorinius! After a brief chat with them, she determined that they didn’t pose an immediate threat, but if things went south they would probably try to jump in and try to benefit from the fallout.

Alcantor and Lady Estabana were still standing, but their morale was almost entirely shaken by the sudden disaster that befell their rebel army. Thankfully, Kvam was here with the giant trident, Roodr, to sort things out.

In the first few rounds of battle Kvam turned invisible and entered barbarian rage, and Faaya cast Darkness and Withering on Sarakasas, which meant he couldn’t directly target them. Things went pretty quickly downhill after that for Sarakasas.

Within a couple of rounds, Sarakasas was slain by the mighty power of the Roodr, and everyone celebrated. There was a moment of slowed down time where Sarakasas’s immortal soul hung in the central chamber, and the cursed ring that Faaya was wearing started glowing and pulsing.

The otherworldly entity she had made a pact with, Emptalar of the Void, wanted her to plunge the ring into the soul so he could absorb it into his power vortex. She did so and was rewarded with EVERY STAT being boosted to 20!

At this point, the adventure had concluded, and I was just riffing for the finale to make it feel climactic. Every stat at 20, why the hell not!?

Great Deep Old Freak!

They emerge onto the streets as the earth shook and the gigantic Deep Old One quaked towards the temple. Kvam and Faaya performed an amazing feat of athletics and ingenuity by using one of the big monster’s huge tentacles to fling themselves into the air and perform a massive plunging attack on the beast.

This meant they flew for three turns and dealt TRIPLE damage when they landed. By an amazing coincidence, the total damage output after this calculation was 45 HP – the exact amount needed to slay the Deep Old One!

Epilogue

The session ended with a brief reunion with key NPC friends, like Sfen who washed up on the reef, and Rhosa who was saved from the depths of the temple, and even Julovern and his amazing airship.

The party decided to leave the city via airship and visit Taineri for a final goodbye as well – and the adventure ended with both of our heroes setting off into the clouds…

 

 

Goodnight,

Feir

Sunday, 8 September 2024

The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen #9 - #14

System: The Black Sword Hack
Adventure: The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen (from The Chaos Crier issue #0)
Players: Faaya (Capingreen), Kvam (Janitor911)
GM: Me (Feirsteax)
Session length: 3h ish

 

Off The Rails

A lot transpired over these five sessions. I thought sesh 9 would be the big rebel meeting to prepare for a raid on the temple. But the players decided the morning of the meeting would be a good time to pull off a quick prison break. So that led to 3 more sessions of temple crawling under extreme cover.

Cover got blown at the end of a session, very good cliffhanger. Both PCs stuck in a dark underground cult hole, one of them drugged up and drowsy. The other tied up as a false prisoner (her cover).

 

tldraw: a fantastic resource for collaborative mapping

Eventually they got out, not without casualties and chaos being unleashed. Prisoners were all freed, but only some escaped. Templars, cultists and priests were all going haywire; killing, fleeing, screaming. A nice glimpse of Sarakasas – first actual time the party has seen him.

 

Cosmic Struggles

Along the way Faaya picked up a cursed ring. I had been reading Elric and was thinking of ways to introduce otherworldly patrons and make the cosmic struggle more personal to the characters. The answer lay in Faaya’s backstory as a vampire. Her civilisation had history in making pacts with chaos entities, so Emptalar of the Void appeared and made her an offer. The Void sensed power and potential in her, so it thought she’d make a good ally / servant.

Emptalar is something I made up. It’s silly, but whatever.

So now she has these nightmares. She hasn’t actually put the ring on yet, though. When she does, it’s going to eat little parts of her soul. This can be mitigated by feeding it other people’s souls. Isn’t that cool?

 

NPC Buddies

Along the way some new buddies were made, and old enemies showed up. Two thieves guilders joined the party as hirelings but they got arrested and are now awaiting their doom on the stranded reef across the bay. Dostoyez of previous sessions turned up at the rebel meeting to attempt an assassination.

This was hilarious, I had a few lines of dialogue planned for the dramatic showdown between Dostoyez and Alcantor – who I’d prepared to be old friends turned enemies now due to the political situation – but Kvam one-shot her before she could even open her mouth. He has barbarian rage and invisibility powers, both at will, and gets advantage on a d12 for damage, plus a d6 bonus from some other boon I can’t remember. So he scored 15 points of damage and she just dropped.

Sfen’s boat is fixed, and he decides to help the cause. Some thieves guild goons join his boat squad. He says he’ll sail out in the morning to keep an eye out for squiddies and fish demons in the bay.

And the Knights and Eastern Merchants have proven to be useful, unlikely allies too. The junk ship owned by the merchants has a cannon, and Sfen had gunpowder. So they agreed to fire the cannon at dawn to signal the beginning of the surprise raid on the temple.

 

The Raid

Yep, they launched a full scale rebellion / raid / full frontal assault on the Black Sun Temple. For this session (#14), I used mass combat rules. By This Poleaxe is a set of rules for running wargame like skirmishes of small to medium scale using theatre of the mind. I honestly don’t know if I got the numbers right on this one, since it seemed almost impossible for some units to land a successful hit, but we stuck with it.

By the end of the session, the ground had shifted as had the balance of forces. Sfen put up a valiant fight, but the Babasalem got absolutely skewered by the Deep Old One. The player characters and the rebels made pretty good headway, with a decisive moment in their favour being the conquering of the barracks by Alcantor and Lady Estabana.

 


It was pretty cool! Now all that remains is the final showdown with Sarakasas and some wrap-up things. I do hope to finish the mini-campaign in session #15 as, despite how fun this has been, I feel as though the adventure is being stretched to its limit at this point and I’m really eager to try something new.

 

 

Okay, I’m 5 minutes late for the next session, gotta go!

Harry

Thursday, 22 August 2024

The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen #8

A Man on the Road (played 08/05/2024)

System: The Black Sword Hack
Adventure: The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen (from The Chaos Crier issue #0)
Players: Faaya (Capingreen), Kvam (Janitor911)
GM: Me (Feirsteax)
Session length: 4h ish

 

Map of the Known Realms – an item in Lady Estabana’s inventory.

 

Report

Last session, the party established contact the Thieves Guild, fought a bunch of violent fish-man hybrids, and learned that the Templars were getting more and more suspicious.

I reminded the players of this to highlight to them that their Anonymity Die is dangerously low. It is at a d4 now, and if it goes any lower, they will be attacked on sight by the Templars.

Meanwhile, Alcantor was getting ready to come back home. His memory was cured by Duke Taineri in his necropolis, south of the city. As Alcantor got on his horse, Lady Estabana, a noble Knight of the Dominion, appeared on the crest of a nearby hill. She was riding a huge stallion which carried the unmistakeable form of the Roodr.

For this session, I decided to switch perspectives so the players could play out the return of the Roodr, rather than leaving it down to off-screen dice rolling by me. It gave the players something novel to play with and allowed me to try something weird and different. I had been feeling a bit frustrated with the city crawling portion of the adventure, so I wanted to shake things up.

I prepared character sheets for both Alcantor and Lady Estabana using the character creation procedures. Alcantor was level 5 and Estabana level 3 and they both had some interesting abilities.

For the actual session prep, I used A Man on the Road by Ian Yusem as well as the forest crawl generation procedures from Cairn 2e (WIP).

Due to some elaborate catastrophe involving Julovern and his airship, neither of them were able to get back to Nijmauwrgen by air. The only option was a horseback ride through the misty moor and dark Mystwood.

Stealing an idea from some story games (I think I heard this on a live play of Trophy Gold / Dark), I posed a question to the players: “What catastrophe befell the Airship that meant it could never fly again?” They described a simultaneously slapstick and horrifying sequence of events that culminated in Julovern steering the airship directly into a mountain and setting the whole thing on fire. Burning wounds, yikes.

From here, the two brave riders ventured north, into the Mystwood. They’d heard that a demon stalked the old Myst Road. Of course, it was also the fastest route available to them, so they decided to risk it.

Rolling on some of the tables included in A Man on the Road provided me with the idea that he would pose as a demon.

Soon, their progress was blocked by a fallen tree. They managed to cut through it using some ingenuity and equipment.

The fallen tree obstacle didn’t work very well. It felt a bit artificial, even though I had prepared this location and this obstacle in advance. The question arose, “can we ride around it?” Somehow, I hadn’t thought of that until they asked the question, so I had to scramble to retroactively describe the scene as a narrow gully, with rocky terrain on either side of the tree blocking progress if they wanted to bring their horses.

After clearing the fallen tree, Alcantor’s horse tripped on something unseen below. He fell off with a thud and saw that it was a rope trap. Someone was stalking them!

I provided them with some information (a swooshing noise) to indicate potential danger. The player characters trotted on slowly and I ruled that they triggered the trap since they were still on their horses.

A strange goat-headed figure in the bushes fired a crossbow bolt at them and cackled. It demanded the travellers relinquish their giant trident or die. After a bloody battle, the two travellers escaped, but the goat-headed man was not defeated. He whistled for his horse and a huge Beast emerged from the treeline. Together they retreated into the forest depths. This wasn’t to be the last we’d see of them.

After galloping deeper into the forest, the two riders stopped briefly to regain some strength. A strange host of shambling bog-men were milling around a clearing, though they weren’t immediately hostile. Instead, they were simply insane. When the pair tried to ride past them, one of the bog bodies reached over to Alcantor and puked a mouthful of maggots and nectar straight into his mouth. It was sickeningly delicious.

The next obstacle was more natural, but nonetheless terrifying. A brown bear stood in the road, sniffing at the air. Clearly, the creature was hungry and looking for her dinner. The bear noticed Alcantor and his knight and started ambling towards them.

This was just a random encounter roll for a bear, and it turned out to be the most straightforward and satisfying minor encounter of the session. The evergreen advice to Just Use Bears wins again.

Thanks to some quick thinking on the part of Lady Estabana, they were able to sneak past unharmed. She gathered all the rations she could spare and spilled their contents onto the side of the road. The bear perked up at the smell of such delicious, free food and went over to chow down. This allowed the crew to trot gently past, occasionally shushing the horses as they threatened to become skitterish in the presence of the bear.

 

 

Finally, the party came to a ridge overlooking an old misty swamp. Just beyond it, Nijmauwrgen sprawled onto the sea. They were on the home stretch, but their dangers weren’t over yet. The goat-headed man on the road from earlier was ominously silhouetted against the sky on an opposing ridge. They watched as the man trudged into the swamp, using natural trenches and uneven terrain to set up some kind of ambush.

Alcantor felt extremely ill, the maggoty bog-nectar clearly catching up with him. He vomited and huge writhing maggots spilled from his gob. Losing 7 HP, he almost passed out from the strain of it all. But he kept his composure, and the two decided to head to an old ruined keep just on the outskirts of the swamp to get a better vantage.

Estabana used her a spyglass to get a better view of the man. He was dumping a long trail of sticky black tar across the bog, following a natural trench. Bundles of torches slung by his side, and it looked like he was priming it to be set ablaze.

Eventually, Alcantor went down to reason with him. The man still wanted the trident, and Alcantor was unmoving in his refusal to give it up. There was only one way to proceed, combat!

 

 

It was a treacherous battle. The man had many underhanded tactics that he used to get the upper hand despite being outnumbered. At one point, he even deliberately attacked his own horse, Beast, to rile it up and get it angry. The huge stallion thundered across the swamp, hurting itself even more in its furious trample, and rammed Alcantor to the floor.

Alcantor was knocked out and Estabana was at the top of the keep firing potshots with her crossbow. With incredible luck, she landed a bolt on the man’s neck, and he slumped to the floor.

She thought better of lingering around any longer and roused Alcantor awake. Concussed but still furious, he shoved the man completely down into the swamp to drown him. They turned and made towards Nijmauwrgen. A few minutes later, they could hear gasping and gulping behind them. The man had somehow survived the drowning!

He chased after them and set the trench of tar alight, but he was too late. His cruelty had kept him alive, but the two riders escaped his clutches and galloped towards Nijmauwrgen.

This combat was messy as hell, but I like how it worked out. It had some of the same issues I identified before of struggling to contextualise an encounter. In the case of the fire-pit trap, I had to describe it as a giant trench that somehow spanned the whole swamp and on either side of which were cliffs. This, again, felt artificial. I’m honestly not sure how best to deal with this.

Otherwise, it went really well. There was danger, tactics, surprises and twists. I’ll write more in the thoughts section below.

At the city gates, the guard grilled them, asking awkward questions. But when Estabana pushed a fistful of silver into his palm, he looked the other way and let them through without another word…

 

Thoughts

The actual encounter from the Man on the Road pamphlet was really fun. It takes a little effort to find a nice environment in which to slot it into, but once you do, the character is totally brutal. He has a lot of tricks, including multiple ways to cheat death and come back with a vengeance. The players really enjoyed discovering just how depraved this awful man was, and the combat was very thrilling as it was genuinely dangerous. Alcantor could have died or been kidnapped had Lady Estabana not landed that last crossbow bolt.

Some inspiration from the OSR discord came into play in a nice way here. There was an interesting conversation about “Jewelbox” dungeon design and the importance of empty rooms. Someone had critiqued the concept as sometimes resulting in dungeons where every room contained “messed up stuff that will kill us” without many safe locations or places to retreat to. It inspired me to add a few “empty” locations to the forest crawl for this session. The ruined tower was one such location, and immediately the players grabbed it and used it as a defensive vantage point. Cool!

 


I think if I were to rerun this, I’d tweak the forest crawl a bit. There didn’t seem to be any reason for the characters to deviate off the main Myst Road at all, so the other locations felt almost wasted. Some of the random encounters weren’t all that interesting, either (fallen tree, bleh). But in general, I’m very positive about how it all went.

Timing of sessions and one-shots is a constant learning curve for me. I thought I’d struggle to fill the time, but this turned out to be our longest session thus far!

 

 

Thanks,

Feirsteax

Sunday, 9 June 2024

The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen #7

The Thieves Guild (played 12/04/2024)

System: The Black Sword Hack
Adventure: The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen (from The Chaos Crier issue #0)
Players: Faaya (Capingreen), Kvam (Janitor911)
GM: Me (Feirsteax)
Session length: 2h30m ish

 

Report

After reading Grove of the Gourd Dwarf’s report of his Mothership session a few weeks ago, I have been inspired to keep this one brief!

We left off last time after the party met with Mazelius, the king’s representative. He sent a crow (raven, pigeon, something winged) over to the encampment of Knights just outside the city. The crow held a message telling them to bring the ancient trident, Roodr, to the old necropolis south of the city, where Alcantor of Zisyphus was resting up, having his memory curse fixed.

Another job ticked off the to-do list, our terrible twosome (and the mighty Sfen) headed off to the One-Eyed Cat, a tavern that held a secret of some kind. It turned out the Thieves Guild leader, Zvoorinius, was holed up here, waiting for them to show up. They’d heard of Faaya and Kvam by reputation and knew they could be counted on as allies in the fight against their common enemy, the tyrannical cult of The Black Sun of the Deep.

This bit was pretty hard to run, I just had to wing it and improvise a tavern scene on the fly. The description of the bar was a few lines and an NPC stat block, but I wanted to give the scene a bit of gravitas, so I coloured in a few extra details. For example, I put a creepy guy staring at them from across the bar. They distracted him with conversation and began asking loads of questions I wasn’t ready to handle, so I had Sfen come over and draw his attention away while our two unlikeable heroes went off to do Thieves Guild stuff.

The thieves were another ally in the fight against the Black Sun, so Faaya and Kvam asked them to help by providing any intel they had on the temple. In return, they promised to bring back Alcantor along with the legendary trident, Roodr, which the Thieves secretly have their eye on. Some money was paid for insurance, too.

A funny situation came up where Faaya’s player pocketed the gold without Kvam getting a chance to have a look at it. We all know each other pretty well so it was taken in good humour, but I made sure to check out-of-character if this was okay with both of the players.

On their way home, well past midnight now, the town was oppressively quiet. Doors and windows shuttered, the rain pouring down and the crash of waves in the distance was all that could be heard. However, turning down a side street, the gang ran into a horrible scene: six burly, grey-skinned men with rubbery skin and fish-like features were shaking down the residents of a small home.

The party sprang into action immediately and showed absolutely no mercy. By the end of the scene, the six human-fish hybrids were lying dead in a heap. The family that was being roughed up thanked them and promised that their deed would be remembered in times to come.

This was just a random encounter roll on the nighttime encounters table. I rolled it once for the walk home from the pub and, unfortunately, they triggered this encounter.

This is the point where I realised throwing one or two level 1 enemies at the players at a time is not a challenge to them in the least. With their various abilities (including assassination strikes and invisibility), they made short work of the Hybrids even without Sfen’s help. I must up the ante for the next battle and give them a bit of a challenge.

They also just left all the bodies lying round the street, again. I think the anonymity die needs adjusted down another step. Good thing it was already extremely low anyway! On the upside, this little region of the neighbourhood will be more supportive of any potential resistance campaign launched by the players.

Finally, they went back to the Babaselem and Faaya cast dream message. She used her sorcerous abilities to remotely tell Duke Taineri that a Knight of the Dominion would be meeting up with them soon to give Alcantor the Roodr. Then they can just hop back on Julovern’s flying machine and zip back to the city in no time.

Finally, the gang took a long rest in the ship. When they awoke the next morning, an ominous sign was stapled to the nearby buildings and fences…

 

 

 


 

Thoughts

This was one of those sessions where I came away feeling like I’d barely been able to push the game forward at all. In retrospect, that’s not actually true. I’ve said elsewhere that this is the first adventure I’ve run that’s lasted more than a handful of sessions. I am still getting used to the slower pace of the narrative compared to things like one-shots.

We’re also only able to play for two and a half to three hours at a time, since we usually play on a weeknight. This is a nice length, but it does mean that sometimes you don’t achieve a whole lot during a session. A random encounter can take up a solid half of the game time.

In the weeks since I’ve really come to appreciate the shorter game times and slower pace of this campaign. I’m feeling a lot more positive about it than I was in my previous post.

 

 

Thank you for reading,

Feirsteax

Sunday, 19 May 2024

Paper Chase

System: Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition)
Adventure: Paper Chase
Players: Mum & Dad
GM: Me
Session length: 3h

 

The Starter Set

This was the first time my mum and dad have played Call of Cthulhu. It isn't their first time playing a pencil and paper roleplaying game, however. A couple of years ago I ran The Portal Under the Stars for them one evening and they really enjoyed the chaos of it.

Back then, I didn't give them full character sheets as I didn't want to overwhelm them with mechanics. This time, though, I gave them some of the pre-gens included in the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set to choose from and made photocopies for them to use.

The 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu Starter Set has some really cool adventures in it. If you want to know more about it, this video review is great. My good friend Capingreen bought me the game as a gift last Christmas. After reading through it and playing the solo adventure, I hadn't got round to playing it with anyone else. Since I have got back in the role-playing swing of things lately, I thought I should get the Starter Set out again and try some of those adventures.

 

Report

Paper Chase is a short, simple adventure designed for one investigator and one keeper (one player, one referee), though it can easily be run for two players. It's a great tone piece, with a simple hook that hints at a darker mystery and an undercurrent of sadness. It doesn't go too hard on the more intense content that can be found in other Call of Cthulhu adventures, so it's suitable for players who aren't sure whether or not they want to play this type of game.

My parents aren't too keen on the more occult themes in other adventures (séances are a no-go!) so this one was perfect for them.

I'll not spoil the module here, since it's so short and I think it's a nice one for new referees to try. 

The setup is that both investigators are members of Miskatonic University's Society for the Exploration of the Unexplained in the fictional city of Arkham. They receive a letter from a Thomas Kimball, asking them to investigate a simple burgulary. Upon reaching his house, however, Thomas asks them if they can find out any information about the strange disappearance of his uncle a year earlier. After some investigating, the investigators discovered the truth and survived to tell the tale… 

 

 

 

 

Thoughts

When I've played Call of Cthulhu games, the thing I remember and love the most is the atmosphere. The strong sense of setting, the seemingly mundane beginning, using skills such as "Library Use" and "Archaeology", and the slow descent into dark and terrifying situations.

This was my first time actualy running the game, and I wanted to achieve some of that atmosphere and pacing in my game. I think it was a success.

  • Rules – The rules were easy for everyone to understand. Almost all rolls are d100 roll under your skill or attribute, so there’s no confusion over which die to roll.

  • Improvising NPC conversations – always difficult for me, I think it's just something that gets better with practice.

  • Page flipping – I didn't give myself enough time to properly read the scenario beforehand, so when my mum and dad were asking me lots of specific questions, I had to page flip quite a bit to find the info. Not a big deal, though.

  • Pacing – We played through three or four scenes of initial investigation before I had an NPC suggest something that would push them towards the conclusion. That was about 30 mins of setting and character introduction, an hour and a half of initial investigation, and about an hour of higher intensity conclusion. It worked perfectly.

A very good adventure and game, would play again!



Update 23/05/2024

I did play it again, twice! Once with three players and once with one player

Three Players - There isn't quite enough in here to hold the attention of three players, I don't think. Or maybe my players weren't all that interested to begin with. There was a lot of cross-table talk and mobile phone usage. One player kept asking if they could find any treasure chests. 

One Player - This was my third time running the game, and it was by far the smoothest experience. For this time through, I decided to use some face-down cards and a smattering of d4s as a kind of abstract play area. Each card represented a building and the d4s represented characters. It was a nice addition to the game.

 

 

Slán,

Harry