Miskatonic University Campus

Completely agree.

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Nvision wrote:There is one, possibly contentious, piece of advice I'd like to offer regarding running a Lovecraftian game for the first time. I'd suggest looking for a fairly linear adventure to cut your teeth on. The reason for this is two-fold; it allows you to more easily absorb the general plot structure and it will limit "splitting the party." I've found almost any scenario that has a point where the group can split up to investigate different leads or cover more ground, they WILL do so. Transitioning play between these two (or more) groups to keep the players involved in the game and maintain the atmosphere you want can take a fair amount of finesse. While railroading can be a dirty word for some players it can be comforting to have to rails there if you're just getting used to GMing.

A few scenarios that might fit this, that I've enjoyed running, are "Engine Trouble" by Tom Lynch, "Unsung Saga" by Oscar Rios, and "The Crack'd & Crook'd Manse" by Mark Morrison. All of these feature limited locations or streamlined events that keep players from wandering too far from the action, but can still be deep, enjoyable experiences.

This is indeed excellent advice, and happens to coincide with my own line of thinking in several respects. That said, if the party does split, I think I have a pretty good handle on how that can be negotiated so the pace of play doesn't suffer and the sequence of the investigation remains intact.

I like Eddypo's suggestion of a follow-up of some sort - maybe we can tack a postmortem discussion of the game onto the end of the live play whenever it happens to air.

By way of an update, I have picked out a scenario and am doing just a little bIt of surgery on it to highlight some of the elements that I think I can best exploit. Any of the Keepers (or listeners, for that matter) who have previous experience win it may find some new and unexpected elements in the investigation.

Thanks, all.

Another great podcast guys. Listened to it on a long drive to my daughter's away game. Laughed and found a lot of insights to the roll of the keeper along the with covering many miles.

Great episode once again.

One thing I wanted to add was about getting those nerves and jitters before running a game. I've run probably around 100 Call of Cthulhu games - both at cons and for home groups, for newbies and experienced people alike. I still always get that nervous pit in my stomach.

I think this is natural as you want to put on the best game you can for your players. I've found, however, that even bad games (and yes, I've run my share of crap) are still fun and the nerves are largely unfounded. And after 5 minutes into the game you'll find the nerves have left because you are focusing on the game itself. Before you know it, 4 hours have passed, the majority of the party is dead or insane, and the players are talking about how much fun they had.

Great point. I am very nervous going into a game, and I often have moments beforehand (especially at cons) when I wonder why I put myself through the stress. But those anxieties go away as soon as the game gets rolling. Players usually want to have fun, so consider that you're in the company of people who are your best and most invested cheerleaders.

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I don't get nervous anymore unless I don't feel I know my material well enough. The players you get will add or detract from that negative feeling, too.

Running for compassionate friends is always the first stop for new GMs.

Just so you all know.... Dan, Murph, Chad, and I had our first game with Keeper Mike last night. It was much fun, and Keeper Mike did a fantastic job of running the game, and made excellent use of the 7e rules, in particular the use of Bonus Dice. It was recorded, and should be in our actual play feed soon. We play part two tonight.

That's fantastic! Nice job Mike! Can't wait to hear it.

Glad to hear the first session went well! Looking forward to hearing it Keeper Mike.

Great episode & one of my many favorites, as also new to the keeper screen. Luckily? as I've been trying to run locally before trying to run games online, I found the other beginner keeper problem of fighting everyone's schedule to try to get the game going.

One little sidenote is that with running Cthulhu Dark that I thought of while listening to this in the podcast backlog, agreed not the same as playing running BRP CoC or Trail of Cthulhu, is that it might be good for some groups to try out a session or two of Dark if the group is more used to wargame RPGs like D&D and just new to the whole idea of investigative/mystery RPGs to see if they'll like it plus get ideas on who they want to play for longer games. Dark has such simple rules it's easy to get into for an evening & after meeting a ton of gamers over the years, there are some people who are hardwired into that D&D kind of gameplay that it's the one thing they enjoy over other RPGs that are more storytelling/improv over crunchy rules. By doing a session or two in Dark, the GM can bridge the mechanics to CoC/Trail as well as finding out that player X doesn't like this style of gameplay but he/she knows someone else who'd love to try it out.