MU Podcast 055 - The Secrets of our Mistakes

[WellMoustachioed]

I tried to give Trail a good shake, I'm not sure if I'm just stuck in the 'if it ain't broke' mode or not. There are a couple things that I don't care for in Trail. The combat, I found that it isn't lethal enough and for some reason rolling a single 6 sided dice just seems odd in Cthulhoid situations. Another thing I think that hurt my first impression was the adventure included in the book. It wasn't Mythos based and to be honest, Cleveland not exactly dripping in Lovecraftian atmosphere.

I'm glad Call is working for you! It's not that it doesn't work for me, just a preference. The d6 thing bugs my players more than me, but I regularly have sessions (usually during the initial investigation) that we roll NO dice. Just roleplaying and forward movement in the plot. Combat might be a little less dangerous, but retaining enough menace to discourage a headlong assault.
The Cleveland adventure from the book and the "Murderer of Thomas Fell" that Keeper Jon mentioned are both not great. It's really a shame that those are the two most common introductory scenarios. I will say that just about any setting can have a Lovecraftian atmosphere (even Cleveland); it just wasn't a very interesting scenario.

[fallingtower]

When I first got Trail, I actually partially wrote out a scenario that would've been quite interesting. It takes place in the Ford Rouge plant in 1936 and would require that one if not all of the investigators be black.

In it, a particularly unlikable foreman (and not the first) dies in a car fire. A lot of the scenario revolves around black factory workers and delved deep into black neighborhoods. Not a place where white investigators would make much headway and not stick out like sore thumbs.

Never finished it, I do have the outline somewhere.

Core Clues & Highlights:
Blind Pigs, corrupt cops, factory and racial politics.
Occult symbols found scratched underneath the driver's seat.
A church that only holds midnight services and has it's windows blocked off. (supposed reason church for 3rd shifters)
was going to feature a 3 lobed burning eye of some sorts.


I quit working on it after I figured my current group probably couldn't and wouldn't handle it correctly.

[Keeper Jon]

When I first got Trail, I actually partially wrote out a scenario that would've been quite interesting. It takes place in the Ford Rouge plant in 1936 and would require that one if not all of the investigators be black.

In it, a particularly unlikable foreman (and not the first) dies in a car fire. A lot of the scenario revolves around black factory workers and delved deep into black neighborhoods. Not a place where white investigators would make much headway and not stick out like sore thumbs.

Never finished it, I do have the outline somewhere.

Core Clues & Highlights:
Blind Pigs, corrupt cops, factory and racial politics.
Occult symbols found scratched underneath the driver's seat.
A church that only holds midnight services and has it's windows blocked off. (supposed reason church for 3rd shifters)
was going to feature a 3 lobed burning eye of some sorts.


I quit working on it after I figured my current group probably couldn't and wouldn't handle it correctly.

Sounds awesome. You should either finish it as Trail, or redo it as Call... or both!

[WinstonP]

The next issue of the Arkham Gazette (that Chad mentioned in the episode) is now available:
http://sentinelhillpress.wordpress.com/ ... available/

[hastur]

yes... soon my collection will be complete, and the manifold hexiform opened o'er the Earth.

...by which i meant to say, thanks!

[Gerall]

Never finished it, I do have the outline somewhere.

Core Clues & Highlights:
Blind Pigs, corrupt cops, factory and racial politics.
Occult symbols found scratched underneath the driver's seat.
A church that only holds midnight services and has it's windows blocked off. (supposed reason church for 3rd shifters)
was going to feature a 3 lobed burning eye of some sorts.


I quit working on it after I figured my current group probably couldn't and wouldn't handle it correctly.

That's why the internet exists- to provide playtesters for your Cthulhu-tainted horror scenarios!

I'd love to see what's been written thus far.


Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[fallingtower]

I'll see what I can scrum up Gerall.

Some of it is on scrap papers, some of it is on another hard drive. I will see what I've got. Not sure how much of it can be found.

That's one of my bad habits, I write ideas on scrap paper, type up some on my laptop and some of it in my game binder.

I do love 1935 Fords

[specter]

Dan, I think you mentioned that you had run a mega-Masks campaign combining several different campaigns (I think you mentioned Shadows of YS and Trail of Tsaggouth). That sounds like a neat idea for an experienced group. Can you tell us a bit about how you managed to link the campaigns together? I'd be interested to learn if you managed to introduce Jackson Elias to the investigators before Masks and how you did it.

[viscounteric]

Brilliant as always. In regards to con games going down the toilet, I had a buddy who ran a Top Secret scenario for his first con game at the tender age of 16. It had something to do with nuclear sub and some operatives, but regardless, the who plot was shot to hell in the first five minutes of the con slot.

Six hours later, the game finally finished, which will go down as the greatest game this dude has ever run. Nothing's come close in the following 23 years.

I'm also currently running Masks with a heavy backstory of Day of the Beast as well as some intricate involvement with the Half Moon Cult from Secrets of New York. I also introduced an old faculty connection from Brown Spawn, as well as setting into motion a young Treasury agent investigating some prior shenanigans in Boston, which might be useful later (Escape.

After dealing with the KKK, two cults of Cthugha, a secret Army chemical weapons program, and multiple crime lords, a few cults of the "Big N" all dealing with them individually should be no problem, right?

[caddy1071]

Though not a Call of Cthulhu mistake, it is my most memorable.

When I was a youngling, my first foray into gaming, Basic D&D, I misread the Wandering Monsters rules and would roll them whenever the characters were engaged in combat. My logic, well fighting makes a ton of noise, why wouldn't it attract other dungeon delvers. Sometimes it was bad (more orcs! or some rats or skeletons come wandering in), sometimes it was good (a party of Dwarves comes to the rescue).

Even after I figured out that I was DMing wrong, I still kept doing it cuz it made so much sense and was a lot of fun.

That is GREAT! Thanks for sharing - gotta say, that must have been a an awesome faux paus - that's what legendary battles are made out of. ("All of a sudden, these cave pixies came out of NOWHERE!")

tty!
Cory