I felt the games were ok. My favorite was the modern Japanese scenario due to the table dynamics and the fresh setting.
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10/13 Fri, 10am-2pm (took 3 hrs)
The Causality Trap
System: CoC 7e
GM: Benjamin Wenham
4 Players: Neal T, Sam I, Lorraine A D, Morgan Hua
The Causality Trap is a short Hard SF/investigative horror scenario in which the investigators are tasked with investigating the wreck of humanities first FTL ship.
The Prometheus, humanities first manned FTL craft has failed to return from its maiden interstellar voyage to Proxima Centuri. Now, the crew of the Sisyphus (the Prometheus sister ship) have been scrambled to find out what happened to the Prometheus and its crew. [This is a playtest for a forthcoming module]
Very Hard SF. This a logic puzzle where having some familiarity with knowledge of Analog SF level of science fiction would help. Not a pew-pew type of game. This is more like Solaris or Stalker.
That said, I enjoyed the game for what it was.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We jump to Proxima Centuri and find the Prometheus disabled and missing several sections of the ship and an unexpected automated probe from Earth. The first thing we do is send back information we've gathered and a status report. After repairing our ship, we discover we're 5 years in the past, FTL takes negative time! The probe triggers a flashback where we remember seeing it 5 years ago. It had mysteriously arrived on Earth with images of the Prometheus.
GM also gives us another flashback where we learn that a giant storm wiped out the east coast of the US and killed many people. After some calculations, my PC figures that if we send a message back, it'll arrive in time to evacuate the East Coast and save many lives. When I try to send that message, the laser relay fails and we notice our communications tower had disappeared. Sending a message back would cause a paradox, so paradox prevention erased our communication tower from reality. The Prometheus is also missing their communication tower and their FTL drive. We conclude that the Prometheus tried to communicate with home and tried to jump back home.
We gain access to the Prometheus SysOps and found that the crew is missing and there are voids inside the ship that matches the number of crew members. The missing sections of Prometheus aren't sheered off, but is filled with a black void.
We checked the probe and found that it was put in sleep mode by the Prometheus crew and it would wake up in 10 years and jump back to Earth with it's video of the Prometheus.
So, our solution was to have the probe sleep for 5 years and send a laser message back to Earth explaining the FTL time travel issues, paradox preventions, and to send us supplies that would last us 10 years.
Not much later, a probe shows up with provisions and entertainment. We wait 10 years and then jump back to Earth, so we'd return after we'd left, without causing a paradox.
At one point, I said, "Why don't we just look for a habitable planet and just stay there?" The GM said, "That would end the scenario." Oh, ok. Also the GM pointed out some background info on our character sheets at key points, depending on that for our character motivations. I dislike that as I always think character motivations are up to the Players to interpret. Scenario designers shouldn't depend on background info to drive the plot. Background info is just for flavor. Acting on it or not is up to the Player, not the GM. Novelists can make their characters dance to the author's will, GMs shouldn't do that. PCs should be under the Players' control, that's what makes it a roleplaying game vs a novel.
Join Keeper Heinrich Moore as he runs "The Bottle Episode," a classic-era scenario for Call of Cthulhu written by Benjamin Wenham for the Miskatonic Repository. Set in dream-shrouded Kingsport, investigators look into the sudden disappearance of lawyer and amateur historian Joshua Abbott from a seemingly locked room. Where has the missing attorney disappeared to, and what might it have to do with a near-decade old maritime disaster?
This scenario was written by the GM of my earlier game session, The Causality Trap.
I enjoyed the investigation aspects of this scenario and it was fun. Though later analysis does bring up some issues which I'll point out in the spoiler section.
Heinrich is consistently a good GM and did a great job running this.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
My issue is that in the ending we had where we failed our freeing ritual and broke the bottle, all manner of hell broke loose. If we had just broke the bottle in the first 10 minutes of the game, we would have been better off. So, the only thing that prevented us from doing this was that the GM told us, all the PCs, that we loved Ships in Bottles and treasured them. Again, the scenario design required that the PCs thought in a specific manner dictated by the GM. 4 random PCs who were asked to investigate loved Ships in Bottles, a bit of a stretch. If we were PCs who belonged to a Ships in Bottles club, that would have made more sense. Then you'd have to have to come up with a reason for the club to investigate the disappearance of Joshua Abbot.
I also suspected that the scenario was designed such that the ritual should fail because that causes the giant reveal, without it the scenario would be pretty flat and anti-climatic.
Another issue is that we were chasing down clues related to the history behind The Spirit of Providence (the Ship in the Bottle). We found out afterwards that was all a red herring. That 80% of our investigations were pointless. The quicker clue trail was finding the maker of the bottle, a dream bottle / dream catcher. It would have been better if there was a stronger tie between the bottle maker and the ship. It was just a coincidence that the ship in the bottle was The Spirit of Providence.
With some tweaks, the scenario could have been stronger.
4 Players: intothewild, yoSteph, ZanderGM, Morgan Hua
In the year 1877, a shocking trio of murders rocks the mining town of Heck's Peak, with locals blaming a mysterious pioneer caravan, though players may find more sinister things afoot...
GM had a terrible microphone and sometimes we were only able to hear about half to one third of his words. So, that was a bad experience.
I thought the scenario was marginal. Had a good table of Players, but that didn't overcome the negatives.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
PCs are strangers that arrive in town and for an unknown reason, the sheriff deputizes us to investigate 3 murders, his deputy is sick. WTF. This makes no sense at all. You'd think trusted locals would be deputized instead. The sheriff sits in the jail and we go investigating the murders by ourselves. Still, WTF.
We talk to town's folk and check out the crime scenes and bodies. The local townies were torn apart by something big and dangerous the previous night. That morning a caravan of deformed strangers had left town. The locals think the caravan strangers committed the murders and left town.
We track the caravan and the trail spits off into the badlands (caravan) or large goat-like hooves that went into an abandoned mine. After some discussion, we go into the mine. We run into ghouls and have a fight in the dark tunnels. Upon exiting, we blow up the mine entrance (after finding a single stick of dynamite) and vow to return in the morning to collapse it completely.
In the morning, two people from the caravan return to town to buy a new wagon wheel. After talking to them, they seemed a bit fishy (Deep Ones fishy and maybe even a Shoggoth Lord), hinting that one of their members at the caravan might have been responsible for the town deaths, so we put them in the town jail.
We go to the mine, find evidence the entrance was reopened, and use up a case of dynamite and blow it up, causing multiple tunnels and part of the mountain to collapse. Then we head to the caravan and bring the suspicious guy back into town and found that the two caravan people had killed the sick deputy and escaped.
Then the caravan people show up and there's a face off between the caravan people and the sheriff. At that point, we decided to nope it out of there. Behind us, a big fight erupts between Deep Ones and a hoard of Ghouls.
It's bad when the GM has to voice two groups of NPCs and his audio keeps on randomly cutting out. One of my rules is you never have NPCs talk to NPCs while the PCs are just the audience. Basically, the GM is talking to himself and we're just passively listening. A bad idea.
And why title the scenario "A Murder" when it starts off with 3 murders? Shouldn't it be "Murders at Heck's Peak?"
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
10/15 Sun, 11am-3pm (took 3 hrs)
Unseasonable Blooming and Minuet
System: CoC 7e
GM: Michael Reid (mjrrpg)
4 Players: Jo S, Alex S, Denice K, Morgan Hua
The investigators travel with a friend to his mountainous hometown of Hodaka City, home of the ancient Hodaka Shrine and its enshrined God of Learning. Their trip is interrupted by chilling phone call, sending them on a search for a missing person that connects modern day social media with ancient history.
Modern day Japan - Pregens provided - Beginners welcome
Fairly straight forward scenario, but I had a lot of fun. Great table of Players, great GM. My favorite of the 4 games I played in.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
NPC's sister calls her brother, she's in distress and the phone goes dead. She was with a friend and either was at the Hodaka Shrine or a restaurant after visiting the shrine.
After some social media and google searches, we decide to go to the Hodaka Shrine. It's closed, so we trespass, talk to the priest in charge and get ahold of CCTV footage and see two figures go up the mountain path to the adjunct shrine. After some searching, we think they went further up the mountain. It's winter, but the mountain is unseasonably cold. And there's a blooming plum tree somewhere up on the mountain that shouldn't be there.
We notify the police, they tell us to go home or wait at the bottom. One of the PCs has a stroke of genius, slips their cell phone into one of the police backpacks, so we can listen in to them. We let them go up, then we follow behind them. Some horrible disaster befalls the police.
We learn about the history of the shrine and about a demon and a required ritual needed to imprison it. On the trail, we improvise modern ritual items to re-imprison the demon in the plum tree.
Fun scene: my PC puts his hand against the tree and yells at another PC to stab his folding knife into my hand and into the tree, so fresh blood anoints the blessed knife that stabs the tree. We had blessed the knife earlier via a cellphone call.
Had a lot of fun running Unseasonable Blooming for you and your fellow players, Morgan. Hope to see you in another game sometime! Casualty Trap's been catching my eye for a while. Wish I had been able to play that one. Maybe when it comes out! Mike
1 comment:
Had a lot of fun running Unseasonable Blooming for you and your fellow players, Morgan. Hope to see you in another game sometime!
Casualty Trap's been catching my eye for a while. Wish I had been able to play that one. Maybe when it comes out!
Mike
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