Signups and communications was provided by tabletop.events (TTE). TTE wasn't integrated with Discord. The problem is that people who signed up on TTE have their real names displayed and the only way to communicate with them is via TTE. TTE messages sometimes got filtered into Spam email folders. And on Discord, there's no way to find the corresponding Players or GMs. There were a lot of communication problems. Also if you get a ticket to a game after the GM has sent out his notification email, you'll have to ask the GM to resend any previous notifications.
The good news was that I initially signed up for 3 games. 2 games got cancelled. I found a replacement game. It got cancelled. Then found 3 open seats and wound up playing in 4 games. Crazy huh?
So, the signup system worked really well. It also prevented you from double booking. When I tried to signup for a replacement seat, I had to cancel out of the previous game. If the GM cancelled the game, you'd get a notification and you won't have to cancel out of that game.
One solution is to give each game its own thread in Discord, so GMs and Players can communicate.
Overall, a very enjoyable convention.
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10/15 Friday 10am-3pm (4 hour time slot ran over time by 1 hr)
Ipswich, Massachusetts. December 1922. Investigators follow a cryptic letter to a Colonial-era homestead-turned-hotel which floats more than a cultural past. Amid a foul odor and rumors of hauntings and a shipwreck, they barely tread water in the sea of secrets harbored at the Hart House.
Content Warning: controlling parents, mention of ritual sacrifice and adoption, implied rape of a man, and mention of indigenous peoples using antiquated terms.
GM: Jade Griffin (Megan Kellermeyer)
Players: Morgan Hua (Ruth-Anne the Farm Girl), WishMoon (George the Quarryman), giurdy (Anneliese Chadwick), styx2749 (Hyacinth Clarke the Librarian)
This game ran long by 1 hour. GM asked if it was ok for the players to stay longer.
I found the GM pacing for this game a little too slow for me. There were also some odd GM choices. I also have some issues with the scenario design.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The GM starts with us arriving at the Hart House and asked us how we wound up there. The pre-gens had back stories based on a previous scenario, a shared experience between all the PCs, but completely unrelated to this scenario -- which I thought was important until I realized it wasn't and unnecessary. Then the GM gives a PC a handout, a letter addressed to that PC about odd occurrences at Hart House and that he might be interested in it. GM asked if and when the PC had shared the letter with us. There were no PC-centric secrets in the letter. Um, why else would we all be at the Hart House? Really odd GM choices and questions. Why not just say we had gotten the letter and decided as a group to go to the Hart House? Done. Why all these ambiguous questions about unimportant things? Was it to give some odd illusion of free will? Was this the GM's version of various D&D PCs all randomly arriving in a tavern? The priest pulls out a letter about a quest and shows it to everyone at the table. WTF.
Once inside the inn, the GM asked us what each of us were doing. Um, send George, the only male character, to get our rooms. What else? Um, we wait with the luggage until he gets our room.
We were all really at a loss as to what the GM wanted us to do. Were we suddenly supposed to start searching the inn before we even check in? Really strange.
Two guests at the front desk demand a refund, complain about the smell, and leave the inn. George secures two rooms for us. The smelly room and another room. And if we figure out why the room smells, we get our rooms and meals for free.
GM says there are various conversations happening in the inn, do we want to listen in to other people's conversations or do something else? Um, what? Seriously? That seems impolite. I casually look at some of the paintings on the walls and decorations while waiting for our room. Others make listen rolls. George gets a critical success and the GM dumps transcripts of all the conversations into his lap.
The whole game had these odd GM choices.
What was nice was the GM had historical photos and handouts for the 1640 Hart House in Ipswich, MA.
We spent a lot of time investigating the smell which follows a Deep One plot thread and at one point spent hours searching in the attic and finding things completely unrelated to it. Some clues pointed to a Civil War saber that was donated to The Met in NYC. But most pointed to witchcraft. Only after the scenario ended did the GM tell us that there were two plot threads, the Deep One plot and the Civil War saber plot. Really bizarre.
We figured out the bad smell was coming from the laundry room water pipes which got its water from the well. The laundress' daughter (adopted) was a Deep One hybrid. The real mother, a Deep One, was trying to lure her daughter back and was residing in the well which probably connected to the sea. Both the laundress and her adopted daughter had a bad sense of smell, so didn't notice the foul smell in the laundry room, a really unlikely coincidence. One of the upstairs guests had a cold and a stuffed up nose and also didn't notice the smell in his room. There were just a lot of odd coincidences. This reminds me of a badly written murder mystery. Add lots of red herrings, no matter how far fetched, to deliberately obscure the solution.
In the end, the Deep One came out of the well to retrieve her daughter. Which mother do you side with? The biological mother or the foster mother? Our group of PCs were divided. During the fight, the Deep One escaped into the well with her daughter. After that, the foul odor vanished.
I think this scenario suffered from I got this real location and history and newspaper clippings. How do I make a game out of this? And the writer was unable to reconcile all the cool props and just left it half baked.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
10/14 Friday 3-9pm (4 hour time slot ran over time by 2 hrs)
In 1992 a son receives a letter, lost in the mail six years ago, from a father he does not remember. The letter speaks of the father's wish to reunite with his son, and share in newfound splendors the father has discovered. A few months later, the boy goes missing. Without your help, he may be forgotten from memory entirely.
Pregens provided.
CW: teenager (16+) endangerment
GM: your friend nate (Nathan Hughes)
Players: Morgan Hua (Rico Garcia - Rookie Cop), greywolf5465 (Jean Pinoit - Bad Cop), TheTim (Emma Conner - Detective), Rain of Terra (Martha Foster - Social Worker)
This game ran long by 2 hours, but it was worth it. GM asked if it was ok for the players to stay longer.
Not the most innovative of scenarios because other scenarios dealing with this Mythos deity generally go in the same direction, but I felt this scenario was very well done.
My favorite game of the convention.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The plot is pretty straight forward, but it is how the investigation affects the PCs directly that makes this a great game.
We get to do some good investigative work and hunt down the missing kid, Franklin Dubois. We find his father might be Raymond Dubois, that he and his high school drama group caused a riot in school, that they rehearsed at the Lafayette Theater in a secret room, that they went to a place called Elysian Wells, there performed a play and opened a way to Carcosa.
Early on we run into the Yellow Sign, so as Players we all know what's going on. So, we have to pretend we don't know it's the King in Yellow. During our investigation, we find that people's memories are missing/blurred, information is missing/blurred, and surely, but slowly, we're beginning to forget also.
My PC rationalized all the effects as drug induced poisoning. Door knobs, paper, and masks all had some sort of drug transmitted by contact which caused violent rages, memory loss, and hallucinations.
The investigation was engaging and the loss of memory and information was really well done. Various locations were significantly creepy, the hidden theater room, the long drive to Elysian Wells.
In the end, it was a TPK. One PC met an Avatar of the Yellow King, the rest were torn apart by a flock of Byakhee. And the missing detectives? All erased from memory.
It's Saturday, June 14, 1980. Your crime scene team has been dispatched to Camp Shady Pines to investigate the bizarre deaths of the camp's counselors who had been preparing for the arrival of the campers next week. According to Shelly Peters, the sole survivor, the counselors were attacked and brutally hacked to death by a mysterious masked stranger. It's up to you and your team to find the truth, and fast, so the camp can open on time.
4 players, pre-gens provided
Content Warnings: Blood, gore, body horror, murder, harm to teenagers, possible PvP, possibly drowning
Note: this is an homage to slasher flicks, so be prepared to lean into the tropes!
GM: Rina (Rina Haenze)
Players: Morgan Hua (Det Walker), Andy R (Sgt LeRoy), Lorraine D (Dr Angela Jamison - ME Coroner), Lauren W (Elle Bronson - Lab Technician)
This was a fun game, definitely for slasher movie fans. I'd recommend it.
The crime and death scenes are gory and graphic as per slasher flicks, so sensitive people who can't stand explicit gore should not play this.
GM ran her own scenario which is always a treat. The scenario is slightly rough around the edges, but it has great promise. GM does voices and is definitely into acting for the camera, so depending on your taste, it may or may not be your cup of tea.
My 2nd favorite game of the convention.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Lots to like about this game. PCs go all CSI on the crime scene and then we get killed by the supernatural serial killer. Most games, you either get replacement characters or it's Groundhog Day. In this game, the writer (our GM), came up with a great twist. We return, thinking it's a redo, but we later find out it's a few years later, so it's more like a sequel (this was a great reveal). We kept on getting killed, trying to eliminate the killer. Each time, the setting is different, slightly different at the beginning, to throw us off, then obviously different, and further into the future. This is a great conceit which I haven't seen before.
Of course, at some point, the magic runs out and we "know" we're at the finale (the final chapter) and there won't be sequel. We fail and there's yet another TPK, but a final one. It was pretty fitting.
My only issue is that some clues for taking down the killer weren't apparent enough or were obscured by what was happening. We had part of the solution, but like in most CoC games, incomplete information generally ends in failure.
If I ran this game, I'd probably be clearer on some of the clues on how to stop the creature during the final fight. There were some descriptions by the GM that made us believe the wrong thing.
Summer 1978, the Miskatonic University announces a breakthrough in computer science: the CS-448 P3, called The Weasel. You are invited to attend a presentation of this ultramodern machine and conduct a test run to ascertain its extraordinary functionality. Symbols whizz across the screen. Wait! Is this a message? By whom? The printer goes haywire and spits out a string of strange words. Does The Weasel develops a life of its own?
GM: 10sidedfear (Philip G. Orth)
Players: Morgan Hua (as Prof Stan Coleman - civil engineer), plc5 (Philip C as Bob John Mellor - accountant), JohnLapoint (John L as Jeremy McIntosh & Justin L as Ed Chapman), dnice (Denice K as Anne - computers)
The scenario has some neat stuff, but it was the extra work done by the GM that improved this game from what it was. I loved the late 70s pictures and music. Sort of a blast from the past. Yeah, I grew up in that time period.
Game pacing was a bit slow in some spots, but overall, an ok game.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We're invited to take a look at the latest and greatest computer, The Weasel. We find it's a little spooky, able to connect to things wirelessly in 1978 and to control them. It also seems to have incredible outside knowledge. A professor has used the computer to repeat a ritual chant and it networks to other computers to do the same. The PCs uncover this and use their computer skills to run the counter ritual.
The setting is late 1970s and the GM brought wonderful pictures of university life, pop culture, clothing and hairstyle to the game, and music.
University professors and grad students to the rescue!
I found the starting pacing was a bit slow as we tried to figure out what was unique/wrong about the computer. Then the pace picked up, but the ending was a long series of Computer Use tests which got a bit repetitive.
An interesting scenario, but the extended tests were a bit long and needs to be rewritten.
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