Call of Cthulhu: The Shadow Over Providence - RPG Review
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- Опубліковано 20 жов 2020
- The Investigators visit an Egyptian exhibit at a Rhode Island hotel and an ancient evil is awoken. Here are my criticisms and Game Master tips for running this scenario.
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Guest starring Jack the NPC. - Ігри
Thanks Seth! I had a ton of fun running this game for you guys, and I hope to do so again in the future. Yes, your character died, but you failed to elaborate how... or why. Folks, all of the players created their own characters for this game. And I reviewed them prior to the game to see if I could find anything that I might eventually be able to use against them. And as Fate would have it, I did.
Seth's character was a father of a grown daughter. He's hoping that she'll eventually make him a grandfather. Due to some really horrible events, Seth went insane earlier in the adventure. We did the immediate bout of insanity, but the longer lingering effects, I had decided, was going to be hallucinations. So, as we were nearing the climax of the adventure, and one of the players had succeeded in setting the monster on fire, Seth's character gets a look at the burning creature and he sees his daughter standing there with open arms wanting to hug her dad. I can't recall clearly enough if I mentioned it during the game, but I had intended to describe her as being clearly pregnant, like 8 or 9 months along. Well, as soon as Seth saw his daughter, he ran into her arms to hold her. And, he died not only due to the monster trying to drain his life force, but also due to the fire. It was epic.
Call of Cthulhu in a nutshell.
It was fun, man. I was only bummed because I loved doing my bad Sydney Greenstreet voice for him.
Smells like a Table Top War Story to me
@@funnyjewguy , YES!!! I'd love to see that episode!!
Thanks for the clarification. Sounds fantastic.
@@JonHook +1
I love how Seth's good enough at the other characters he portrays that my brain just kind of accepts that they're different people.
I usually just listen to his videos while I'm working and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that they were all characters played by one person
@@AlteredNova04 Heh, yeah. If you're not watching he does *really good voices*.
I constantly forget that Seth is playing all of the characters in his videos. And I am looking the video most of the time! However, he is such a good actor that all of his characters actually LOOK different from each other -- at least to me.
@@luckyleo25 It's true. He uses just enough visual cues to get there, and the voices + accents perfect it.
*or are they?*
There's 100% certainty that the players will chant "Imhotep, Imhotep..." at least once during the adventure.
LOL!!!!
9:20 - Kinda reminds me of the time I worked an extra job, a couple evenings a week at a convenient store long ago. Some drunkard had just fell down and split his head open on the corner of stacked cases of beer while perusing the liquor fridge in a complete stupor. The guy was laying there, face down in an expanding pool of his own blood, and all I saw was one of his legs twitching. After calling 911, and the Responders showing up a couple minutes later (the Fire dept was across the street), a couple customers had entered the store. I was checking them out while the medics were collaring and strapping the guy into a gurney, blood all over the damn floor. The second person, a lady buying a beverage and a snack bar of some kind, asked me "does this happen often here?" I jokingly responded, "Not every day, but you may get to see such things once or twice a week." The lady looked around at the mayhem, leaned closer and whispered, "I'm not supposed to tell you, but I'm a Secret Shopper." We laughed about it. I always wondered what her store review said.
Holy crap. "Service was friendly. Too much blood on the floor. 2-Stars."
Mopping up so much semi-coagulated blood was a real pain in the neck too. That mop would never be the same again.
That opening though.
Seth talking to Jack the NPC is always a Smeagol talking to Gollum level performance!
bravo! 👍
Also, grats on getting to be a player for a change.
If there's one thing Call of Cthulhu has taught me, it is to never go to the opening of a new Egyptian exhibit at a museum. Nothing good will come of it, lol.
5:35
So, wat ya sayin is.....Imhotep, is a Cairo-practor?
See wat I did there?
Btw Call of Cthulhu is one part Agatha Christie, to five parts The Thing,
You should be pun-ished for that...
Me, a kindergarten teacher: *hastily shoves a Hauster statue into their death drawer* Seth you and your imagination!
Death drawer? Freudian slip me thinks.
@@novaiscool1 right?! Big oof there, lol.
When the teacher takes your stuff, it may as well be the death drawer. You never see it again 😂
@@CToast
So many Frisbees....So many
Lazysupermutant, you blew our cover there, you know what you must do. The indoctrination of the world's youth depends on it.
Jack isn’t count yourself out ! You aren’t here just for jokes you are the heart and emotional soul of the entire production !
When you said the exhibit was named "Kingdom of Fire", I was betting on everything going up in flames around the finale.
And bonus points for the call for historic accuracy, Jack deserves a refill.
Fun(?) fact: The human-headed kanope (it portrays Amset, a son of Horus that was in early egyptian times depicted as a woman) would normally have contained a dead person's liver. Whether that means it was taken from a potter as a means of catching Ibnhotep or if someone's liver was removed from it - having some poor person run around in egyptian afterlife without a liver - is up to everyone's imagination. :)
Alot of this is like the Mummy film with Brendan Frazer, Imhotep, drying people to get the juice and full power. I wonder if the guy who made the adaptation played this CoC adventure.
Also, I found what I believe is a Cthulhu Mithos artefact. Is a talking sword who keeps calling me peanuthead.
As a preschool teacher I can finally confirm your suspicions that my mythos knowledge score is above average.
I was in Providence for a wedding last year and stayed at the 'Milton' (now officially called The Graduate). It is truly a well-preserved memento of Lovecraft's era and beloved city. It's a shame the glass elevator is only for show!
Every adventure ever written should come with Seth GM notes, without doubt. Awesome stuff.
Nice photo of the Biltmore lobby for Jack's background. I remember being there for Necronomicon 2013. The Lovecraft walking tour was a bit tough, 2 hours up and down College Hill in late August.
Yeah, but did you see Mathilda Mays in Lifeforce? I'm just saying that naked space vampire isn't the worst way to go...
Right?
Nice touch on having the Biltmore lobby in the background. Love from PVD.
I stayed at the "Milton" during Necronomicon last year. It's beautiful! I was so happy when I saw this scenario that I bought it immediately. I WAS kinda bummed that I didn't get to run it yet but now I'm super happy I get to run it after hearing your take on it. You have an excellent channel Seth!
I hope you enjoy it, Mike. :)
@@JonHook Hi Jon, as promised in a previous comment on this video, I finally ran this adventure as a sequel to "The Necropolis" from the Gateways to Terror collection. It was great. The players shriveled the villain in the final confrontation in the basement of the hotel after spotting him in the elevator shaft, trapping him in a large pickle jar (found in the kitchens) sealed with honey. Of course, all three investigators were reduced to indefinite insanity, and at one point the female archaeologist's bodyguard "realized" that he had always loved her in a bout of mania and proposed to her! Thanks for writing a great scenario.
@@danielgoldberg5357 , that sounds amazing!!! I'm so glad you guys had a good time with this scenario. Hearing this has made my day. Thanks man. :)
@@JonHook You're very welcome!
As a Rolemaster player I didn't want to add to the 66 likes you had. I did though, but you miss out on a great critical.
Another Rolemaster player? Sweet!
@@MonkeyJedi99 after playing RM, it's hard to go back to D&D.
@@somebloke3869 As I played RM a few years before my first D&D (2nd Ed) game; D&D felt like RPG easy mode.
@@Thurgosh_OG yeah, it's like 'what! I got hit by that big thing and just cross of some numbers? No broken bones or stun?'
Ah yeah great way to end the day listening to Seth (btw I would totally buy audio books read by you)
I've been pretty happy with my audiobook narrators. I could read a book all right, but a great narrator performs it.
He has one narrated short story on his channel. It was epic
@@SSkorkowsky I mean I’m not gonna lie sometimes I’ll just put your videos on and let you talk me to sleep
@@yakirchernin6015 heck yeah that’s awesome
Oh yeah, I can't believe I forgot about that. Here's me reading The Mist of Lichthafen ua-cam.com/video/VveSe3MFgf8/v-deo.html
One of the most interesting setups for a dark room I've seen would offer an exciting opportunity in this scenario. It was basically a small, circular dividing room with a rotating wall and only one doorway. The idea was to prevent light from accidentally getting in due to both curtains being open.
This could be used to have a quick contest of strength as the player tries to align the only door with the exit, or having the chamber walls start spinning again as they walk out knowing no one else was in there.
Not sure how viable it would be for the time period, but I think it would work.
Agreed! That's the type of entryway I'm familiar with for darkrooms. Having the panicking PC trying to turn it while the beastie is trying to oppose it would be great!
Woohoo! First time I actually get to watch one of your video's minutes after it comes out! Love your work man
Motivating Investigators in an ongoing campaign to help with the investigation shouldn't be too difficult mainly because most PCs in a CoC campaign tend to look super-shady, especially when the police begin rifling through their stuff and checking their background. Do they REALLY want the police to find those tomes of black magic, the sacrificial blood dagger, and high explosives in their luggage? Is it really a good idea for the police to ask questions about why they were somehow involved in those cult murders in Salem or that series of mysterious fires in Maine? No? Then maybe it's best to hasten the investigation along before it gets to that point!
Geezer here...
Back in high school we had a dark room. Photography was a nerdy and great class. We had an "air lock" set up primarily to haul chemicals and equipment in and out. But from class room we had a revolving door. Small thing, cylinder about 4 feet across. Always figured it was to keep some dolt from opening both doors at once.
Great vid.
Game On.
Thanks! I have this one on deck as my next scenario to run. I was a little disappointed that it didn't really have any Providence background in it other than the hotel. I figured it was going to be a bit of a sourcebook with a scenario or two. Look forwards to running it though. Always great to run a scenario that you've reviewed!
Nice video as always Seth. Recently I’ve been putting together my own submission to Chaosium and your videos really help. Finding the little things I can add to make it better or help out Keepers in running it.
Watched this video when it came out... Seems like a fun ride, Seth.
Speaking of Jon Hook, I got the three-short-scenarios collection "Gateways to Terror", and did an initial glance-over. It looks like it will be fun to run, and I was instantly drawn to "What's in the Cellar?" credited as being written by Jon Hook. Even if you never take a gander at it for a review, it seems good for a oneshot for this Halloween if you ever feel safe to do so, given all that's gone down this year.
Stay safe, Seth. Stay safe.
I bought the pdf based on your review but neglected to use your link by mistake. I will contact drivethrurpg to let them know your reviews are driving purchasing decisions, and will use your links when I buy more from them in the future. Thanks for the great video!
1:05 don't lie. It was Seth, Seth with a wig and Seth with a fake moustache.
Oh, a nice surprise to enjoy with my midnight snack before bedtime. Thanks Seth.
Man, it's late... I should probably go to sleep... After this video.
Is that the new 'Alien' TTRPG Starter Set on the shelf behind you? If so, I have the full book they published last year and loved it. it's a different kind of horror from Call of Cthulhu
We've been doing a sidegame for a while now. It's a really cool system and I dig the hell out of their Stress/Panic mechanics. Once we're done with Chariot of the Gods I'll post some reviews. Currently our little "4-hour" adventure is in its 15th hour with a 4-hour prequel adventure we did when a couple of the players couldn't make it to the regular session.
Oooo I cant wait to play it Amazon delivered the package to the wrong place and now is holding my money hostage for a few days til they give it back so I cant play it this weekend. To make the whole matter worse my dog ate the chic fil a I just ordered an put on the table right before I ran outside to collect my new game that wasn't there so I lost my game and came back in to find the food I just ordered gone I feel like I failed a roll in real life
@@SSkorkowsky I agree, it's a fun and relatively rules-light system to pick up. If you take recommendations for things to include in your video, i think a minor improvement would be to have more possible attacks by the Aliens. I homebrewed two Alien attack tables - one table if the Xenomorph is trying to kidnap someone, and a second table if the Xenomorph wants to dine on a character. Just that distinction added a fun dimension to combat, because PC reactions change when someone is being grabbed or someone is being turned into lunch.
Your work is exemplary and a joy to view, Seth! I look forwards to your future posts, even as I enjoy this one!
I just found this channel and I'm already booked on listening to these module reviews. I love your videos and characters. Great job 👍
I played in Jon Hook's and Matt Ryan's scenario 'Shadow Over Providence' as well, online. Keeper'd by Jon himself. Was a great game and well balanced with spooky, investigative choices, a bit of horror, a dose of kill-murder, even some great sanity loss consequences. Seth's assessment of this scenario is solid, and yet again, I really value his review and channel altogether. Good work all around.
Side note, as Seth mentioned, this was for NecronomiCon 2019, which was a BLAST! Everything a fan of Lovecraftian horror might like. I highly recommend to check out the next NecronomiCon, once safe/when they start them back up.
This was such a fun one for me to GM for my two friends!! I took your advice form a different video and had an NPC act as glue to show the players things and places to go, though he ended up dying to show them the horror of the abominations. I found the fact that in human form, imhotep swears in ancient egyptian a lot so i sped up its growth by having it kill people off screen - it led to an amazing moment where one of my players, who had the police officer as his dad, saw it pretending to be the officer. His dad was acting so weird but neither knew how to question it until I asked them each where they were looking and they both succeeded a spot hidden to find the dad's corpse and imhotep's skin crawling.
Needless to say, Imhotep started swearing lmao
Both ended up dying in the end, i gave them as many tools and chances as I could but the dice failed us all... It was great! XD
Always great to see a new review! Keep it up seth.
Man thank you, I really enjoy your content. Always looking forward to the next installment.
great reviews, killer production quality...just so you know, we at the tiny Dice Are Screaming podcast are your diehard fans
Seth, in Acrobat Reader you can usually disable the backgrounds in most of the newer Chaosium PDF Products when going into the Layers tab on the left side.
Seth finally uploaded another review, my body is ready.
This video made me want to get this scenario and now im looking at like a 12 item order... you need to get a sponsorship with Chaosium. My wallet and wife would love you.
Seth, Thank you for all of the Call of Cthulhu videos. I have just come across this game, (years of D&D player here), and it looks so good! WIth your help, and videos I have bough a lot of books and love the whole concept.. Also, your videos are really good. Keep them up!
Happy to be of service. I hope you and your group enjoys Call of Cthulhu as much as we have.
oooh very excited seeing one set in my hometown, that cover art is great too. They missed a great detail on the building downtown they put on the cover though, irl midway up it has a genie head, and when you look at it from right below it looks like it's going to topple over on you.
edit; on second glance i see the big motel letters on it, which i believe means it's actually an amalgam of two buildings, the biltmore hotel, and the turks-head building.
edit2: having actually watched it now i see it's just straight up based on the biltmore, i was thrown off cause the real one is red brick on the exterior, and i'm used to seeing it from the other direction. sounds like a fun adventure, wish i'd gone to that convention.
This is probably one of my favorite scenario to run for new players, genuinely an amazing scenario.
Seth, I live outside Providence, and have never seen a game set in Rhode Island before. Thanks for the great review!
Hi Jose. The classic Call of Cthulhu campaign, The Spawn of Azathoth has its first chapter set in Providence. Lot's of fun!
Played this with Jon Hook at the Biltmore.. er.. Milton hotel during Necronomicon last year and had a blast. Went insane AND died!
Yes!!! Playing this in the freaking Biltmore was awesome!!!
Thanks again and again, Seth. Great Review!
You sold me and the wife on CoC Seth! Picked up the slipcase set, pulp, a cold fire within and the BRP pulp book.
If Ibnhotep does escape, he should end up at a East Texas retirement home:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubba_Ho-Tep
I have a feeling that Yelp reviews have an entirely different connotation in a Call of Cthulhu campaign.
Excellent as always keep up the good work ...
Nice, was eager for more CoC videos from you!
YAAAY! New CoC Review! Hi Seth :D
Hi.
Exactly what I needed.
Great video as always.
As a Providence resident, I love this!
Commenting because it feeds the beast!
Imagine your doing a seance in Call of Cthulu to talk to some dead guy about his murder, and after a bunch of sanity checks and spooky stuff the ghost is just Seth Skorkowsky.
Wonderful review! I'm considering running a call of cthulhu campaign soon, and have been wondering how to kick things off. This may be the answer.
I'd love to hear how it goes.
14:15 I worked in a darkroom and we had a spinning door that was opaque and had 3 "vanes". Would make it intense trying to get out with a monster attacking
Would love a video on how to create your own cthulhu scenarios.
So Im a big fan, your videos have been what got me into Call of Cthulhu. Ive actually been working on my own module one shot.
I would really like ur opinion on it.
This was great, Seth. Once again you make every review worth its weight in gold. Thinking of getting this and running on FG for my players. Also, Seth, will you be running/reviewing that Free League Alien Starter set I see hiding there behind you?
Thanks. Once we're finished with the adventure I'll do the review for the Set followed by a separate one for the Chariot of the Gods scenario. Because I'm a regular player in our Chariot of the Gods game, I've had to swear under penalty of torture not to look at it until we're done, so once I've been given the all-clear to open the starter scenario up and see what it contains, I can begin the review. I will say that mechanics-wise, Alien is pretty good. The Stress/Panic mechanics are great and the game really does capture that feeling of being in an Alien movie.
I've been thinking of getting into Call of Cthulhu. Would this be a good scenario to run with a new group to learn the ropes, possibly after (or before) the free scenario in the free rulebook?
Now Ibnhotep knows what a TV dinner feels like....
There was a puzzle in the Nancy Drew game "Danger by Design" were you had to develop photos that way. The game implied that the chemicals used for developing photos the highly volatile and would explode if mixed. No idea if that's actually true but that would be the kind of thing I would do is PC if I got attacked in the dark room, dash the chemicals to the floor so they would explode.
I did quite a bit of research in dark room chemicals for this adventure, and discovered that while they were mildly acidic and irritating, they were not flammable or explosive, per se.
Great channel!!
Love it fantastic work as always
I appreciate seeing you on my break but why always a work night my man? XD
I feel Seths shirt gets a little too little screentime today :)
Seth: If you were to pick one of *your* books to recommend, either a standalone book not part of a series which would be relying on knowledge from previous ones, or the first book in a series,
*which one do you think is best and/or are most proud of?*
I'm asking this specific question as I did because I'd like to check one of your books, and love to know which you feel is best to start out with. Probably a difficult question since you don't know my/our tastes, so I asked in that way to let you tell us which you like best based on your preference.
Also: Outside of those caveats, which of your books are most proud of / think is best? That might be one or two more question/s, but I'm mostly interested in the first question of this post.
Book I'm most proud of: Damoren (first novel I sold)
Book that I feel is the best written: Ashes of Onyx
Book that's my personal favorite: Hounacier (2nd in Valducan series)
Book that has the most appeal to new readers: Damoren
Am I the only one who loves to watch these late at night as I’m going to bed?
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(Hail Yog-Sathoth.)
These videos are so good
Seth! Please review escape from Innsmouth. Best wishes
Got d print edition. Thanks Seth
"Hello internet its gorakowski"
God I love auto captions sometimes XD thanks for another entertaining review Seth!
For anyone interested the print on demand version is 20% off at Chaosium right now! :D
I don't play or plan on playing Cthulhu or his space game, but damn if his videos aren't entertaining. Great videos Seth!
So what're your favourite Cthulhu mythos creatures?
Mine:-
Serpent people
The Yithians
Hounds of Tidalos
The Elder Things
The Star Vampire from The Shambler From The Stars story
About the idea to give the players a "time crunch" aspect - the needing to get to a train or plain to go on to the next adventure thing: I find that players will look more for ways to sneak out of the hotel than to investigate, so I don't think it is such a good idea. I know that I tend to focus on the main plot and push "distractions" aside. This means I find it best if these things are needing to be done, not just things that happen that I can chose to walk away from, because I will totally walk away if it means diverting from the main goal.
Great review. You should try to get to Necronomicon. It's geared more for writers of the Weird than a game convention but it's a great time all around. My wife and I were lucky enough to get into a game with Sandy Petersen, some of us lived at the end :)
It's on my list of cons I want to do. Being a weird fiction author and a gamer, it's very high on the list.
@@SSkorkowsky Fingers crossed that the current craziness is over for next year's.
i am looking to write my own scenario or even a campain for Call Of Cathulu based on the local legends of our small isolated town: Old Man Randal, The Two Headed Grizzly, Manbat Colony of Dag Quarry, and the Hagen Family. but i am having trouble with the whole Lovecraftian Mystery part as i only made combat heavy DnD campains
I'm starting to get into CoC and while doing the rounds I found a D20 system book by Monte Cook. Anyone know if it's any good? 3.5 is still my preferred flavor of DnD.
Hiya Seth! Longtime subscriber here. I was wondering if you could clarify the issue with the naming of the hotel in this module? Why was it a problem?
Honestly, I have no idea. I probably could have asked Jon, but it's easier to assume legal reasons because the Biltmore name is likely owned by someone with deep pockets and hungry lawyers. The hotel is currently operating under a different name, but the big rooftop Biltmore sign is still intact, presumably due to its landmark status and reputation.
@@SSkorkowsky fascinating place and history it sounds like...think ill do a lil diggin and learn something new tonight. Thanks for your time Seth!
Yes. The original manuscript has the hotel properly named as The Biltmore. But, there were some concerns that an adventure depicting death and mayhem in the hotel... where we were having a convention at the same time in real life... might not have been well received. So it was renamed.
@@JonHook thank you Jon for your time and response. i was not expecting you to jump in and clarify...AWESOME
Y'know... I successfully ran the Rigid Air scenario as a D&D game (set in Wildemount and Ravnica for two different groups) and now I'm wondering if I should do the same with this.
(For the curious: the Wildemount group couldn't save any of the NPCs in need of help, but lost none of the PCs. The Ravnica group saved one of the NPCs, but two thirds of the party died in the process).
"... a straight line of sight to the exit" 😁
Perhaps Seth will compare the new enhanced edition to this original (I like him covering a scenario multiple times, as there is always another investigative/or gameplay angle to cover....not that there is a sanity loss from redundancy of deja vu'😈)
I've got to know what cocktail Jack is drinking in this one. Because I want one.
The necroscópicas work of lumley is very much like this - has any of lumleys work been converted to a game?
Just curious how many modules did u not survive in across the many rpgs u played
I just purchased this adventure today. What’s the odds.
I'd been sitting on this video for weeks waiting for you to buy the module just so I could post it. True story.
I hope you enjoy it! :)
@@JonHook Waiting for my physical copy, but read through the PDF. Looks like going having a lot of fun. Found the Fantasy Ground version is on sale at Steam, so also picked it up there.
Seth, What are your top ten Call of Cthulhu publications that are out there. Just think that there are a lot of gems out there hidden in all the products released over the years,that are hard to find without a lot of digging etc
I haven't pored through Vol 1. of the 7th Edition version, but the older Mansions of Madness (like, all of it is pretty damned great), followed by Dead Light, The Auction. Few good ones in Fearful Passages. Edge of Darkness. Never ran, but I like Dead Man's Stomp. Blackwater Creek.
You probably can avoid Curse of the Cthonians, The Great Old Ones, and Fatal Experiments. Few decent ones in those, but not the best collections IMHO.
The short answer is, because I played or ran everything I review, if I reviewed it, then it at least met the initial test that it looked good enough to run.
Excellent, Thanks
Jack drank the toast! Bravo! +1 subscriber level!
I've got this coming in today. The hotel is 10 minutes away so it was kind of a had to have it situation.
Jon did an excellent job of running it for the IntoTheDarkness guys a year ago. Link for anyone who's interested:
ua-cam.com/video/x-TOd08syBo/v-deo.html
And this releases on my birthday. Awesome
Happy birthday.
Thanks!
1920s yelp. I wonder how that would work.
Can't find the pdf for free (not in a country that lets me pay online) any help??
This guy looks like he could be Craig Pullin's (Kyle Dunnigan) brother